Patterns of Force (2)

DVD, Star Trek S2 (Patterns of Force) (2)

We had the Roman one, and we had the gangster one, now it's the turn of the Nazis to showcase the negative sides of Roddenberry's parallel planet development theory. Or is it? Because this isn't strictly a progression of Earth history, it's an interference, and from someone who should have known better, not just because he was from the Federation, but because he was an historian! If this is the lesson of the episode, that even learned students of history can make the very same mistakes which they studied, it's a bleak one, as you'd like to think those steeped in what goes around and what comes around would be the last kind to fail to learn. Perhaps that's the point, that with the knowledge of how events have played out before, it can actually make people more arrogant to believe they know better and think they're able to adapt a flawed system into one that works. The trouble with this episode is that it feels more like Desilu's other big series of the late 1960s, 'Mission: Impossible,' and I know because in recent years I've been watching through that series: the team have to go in and find out what happened to a guy from their side, either to kill or rescue him depending on what he's done/has been done to him. They wear stock costumes, get captured and cobble together an escape plan then find out what was really going on and thwart the real power behind the figurehead on the throne - it even takes place on sets that series used and has the same light, bantering tone!

I'm not quite sure at what point I realised this was going to be more of a conventional TV episode than a conventionally unconventional Trek story, but I had the impression left from previous viewings it wasn't one of the high points of the season. There was one moment relatively early that impressed, which was the clever trick the Zeons use to test Kirk and Spock's veracity once they've escaped from Nazi HQ with Isak (whom I thought was called Esoq, which sounded a lot like Esoqq the Chalnoth of the 'TNG' episode 'Allegiance'). I was wondering how the Nazis had been able to track down this hideaway of the underground, but that question was soon answered by the fact that they hadn't, it was all a ruse, and a clever one, too. Apart from that the episode didn't impress. I think it was partly due to the jokey tone, there isn't the horror of this recreation of a terrible period in Earth history (one again created through involvement of humans, though unlike the USS Horizon's inadvertent effect, John Gill's was deliberate, though with the best intentions), and it felt much more like 'Star Trek IV' than a serious Trek examination. But of course this came before 'IV' so that had its genesis in episodes like this, 'The Trouble With Tribbles' and 'A Piece of The Action.' The latter two had been highlights of the season so I can imagine them trying to recreate that success, only attempting it with Nazism probably wasn't the best (or final), solution they should have gone with…

It's not that Nazi stories don't work on Trek, the Cardassians themselves are probably the closest analogy to a Fascist state in Trek terms, and on Ekos we get the same public broadcast screens that the reptilian race would be seen to employ on Cardassia to spread its propaganda and sense of Big Brother control - scarily we now have such things in our own town centres these days which you can just imagine being turned from their advertising uses to more sinister ones depending on who controls them in future. But there would be actual Nazi stories in future Trek, too. While this episode is the parallel development origin (plus outside assistance), 'Voyager' did a two-parter with them in a simulation ('The Killing Game' which used the same building for their Nazi HQ), as did 'Enterprise' ('Storm Front'), which was time travel/an alternate timeline, so the face of evil has always been a draw for the writers. And it's not a bad setup, going down to a planet (though Kirk's qualms about both Captain and First Officer beaming down to a dangerous mission together, exhibited in the previous episode, were altogether absent), in quest of a cultural observer, something we saw in later Trek (notably 'Who Watches The Watchers?' on 'TNG' and 'Insurrection'), but they didn't seem very prepared other than wearing the correct attire for the period (Spock sporting an ear-covering hat again, just like the one in 'The City On The Edge Of Forever'), and carrying an emergency subcutaneous transponder in case they couldn't talk when the Enterprise must beam them up.

You'd think this transponder would be standard issue and everyone would carry it at all times, but here I think there's more evidence the Federation and Starfleet value personal privacy and they aren't going to be tracked at all times, even for the sake of ease and security, in contrast to our current societal direction of travel to more and more personal tracking, observation and data holding. In the end it became a gimmick that, like something out of 'Mission: Impossible' could be used for them to escape from an impossible situation, and while I like the use of surrounding materials (the metal slat of the bunk), it was too convenient and didn't look very realistic that some tiny transponders could somehow direct the heat or light of a bulb into a beam that could burn through the metal lock in seconds! There's also something undignified about seeing Spock with his shirt off - you expect it from Kirk, he often (though not as often, certainly in this season, than you'd think), had his ripped or went around bare-chested (see 'The Gamesters of Triskelion'), but to defrock a Vulcan is like a priest going shirtless, just inappropriate to the dignity of the position. At least they continued the idea of Spock's green blood as the lashes he sustains to the back are of the correct colour as opposed to Kirk's red weals.

Along with the wry tone that Kirk seems to employ, we also have Spock being more naive than usual - when he's using Kirk as a ladder to reach the lightbulb in the cell he keeps asking questions of his Captain's analogies while Kirk just wants him to finish up because he's standing on his whipped back and it's painful. And there's at least one other moment when Kirk actually tells him not to be naive, which doesn't work altogether - are we supposed to believe Spock is really of this mindset or is he teasing Kirk? Kirk himself, as he has done in a few episodes this season, especially towards the end, is much more Shatnerish, the way the character was portrayed in the films. It's just an observation but it did seem that as the season has been coming to a close the actor and character have become closer, perhaps because, as Director of 'Star Trek VI,' Nicholas Meyer observed, when Shatner was tired he overacted less, and it could also be that as time goes on actors relax more and allow themselves to come out in the character as we see with any long-running role, especially at the tail end of a season. It's not a bad thing, but Kirk and Spock bantering away in such surroundings, while it's supposed to be a fun, upbeat adventure, didn't quite suit the subject matter, nor help the episode to feel like serious sci-fi, it's closer to the caricature the films often took as their basis for reality (especially in the Kelvin Timeline series).

Even Spock's powers are used rather perfunctorily here, whether he's dropping Nazi's with the nerve pinch or doing a 'mind probe' as Kirk calls it when he offhandedly suggests doing it on the drugged Gill. There isn't the mystery and intensity we usually expect from such a meld, the drama of the moment overrun by the story's need to get information. And there isn't a lot of drama in the majority of the episode, aside from the scene I mentioned when they're 'found' in the underground (again, it seemed very unlikely the Zeons wouldn't find their escape suspicious, turning up in Nazi uniforms having saved one of their people, but that only increased my respect for how well the twist worked), even down to the lack of recognition the Chairman or the guards on the door exhibit when they show up in the same uniforms again, having escaped from the building only a little time before! In fact it was downright ludicrous when Chairman Eneg finds them in the utility room which McCoy has beamed down to, fails to recognise these escaped impersonators and buys the story they tell about 'Colonel' McCoy being a bit worse for drink! They do at least mention the strangeness - is it supposed to be an indication he was actually a Zeon, or a sympathiser at least, deliberately ignoring the signs? He shows restraint in terms of calling off the beatings earlier and then at the end he's quick to show support for a new regime that avoids brutality, but the episode isn't written well enough to make it clear, and a bit more development might have worked wonders.

It had been a long season, however, and if William Shatner was tired enough to be more himself in his role, then maybe the writers were also becoming a little jaded, which might explain the variable quality of these last few episodes, because this really wasn't one of the more worthwhile or dramatic examples. It doesn't even have a very well written ending as, for a start, the Nazi regime is simply ended - how did they know the Chairman, who was happy for the crew to go so that they can 'do the rest' of what was needed, wasn't actually plotting to take power anyway and saw this as his opportunity? It's all a little too pat, no discussion of the guilt of the masses for how they'd treated the Zeons or not resisted Nazi oppression, just a lighthearted chat on the Bridge of the Enterprise as they discuss the society, turning into a quarrel between Spock and McCoy on the quality of humanity. It's supposed to be fun, it's supposed to be amusing, but in common with the rest of the episode it merely comes across as out of place. And so the image of the story is one of iconic visuals (Kirk, Spock and McCoy in Nazi uniform), but little substance. Even the whole motivation of John Gill was extremely hard to swallow - that this historian, one of Kirk's own instructors at the Academy, thought he'd bring the people together by transforming their society into the 'most efficient' in human history, in spite of the genocidal motivation of it, thinking he could take the useful parts and ditch the rest, was utterly bizarre, especially coming from a Federation official who knew very well how important the Prime Directive is!

If there was one episode that shows non-interference as a wise move, this is the one, but only because it's such a ridiculous situation. In fairness, it could be suggested the Federation is still fairly young, just over a century old, and they didn't even have a non-interference policy to begin with (see 'Enterprise' and 'A Piece Of The Action'), and Gill was an old man, plus I don't think we know how long he'd been there, so he certainly wouldn't have heard of what happened with the cultural contamination of the Sigma Iotians - it's possible they didn't know many examples of their directive being misapplied and he thought he knew better. In any case, he gets his reward, a magazine-full of bullets (how did that broadcast work? We see Gill on a screen, but he's also behind a curtain, so where did the broadcasting camera go?), so it's not like he got off scot-free, but for someone who was more interested in causes and motivations (like my own great history teacher, Mr. Rafter, whom I remember writing on the board 'MOTIVE'), rather than dates and events, you'd expect him to have been more sensible. Then again, even Kirk is close to breaking the code when he sees Isak being mistreated in the street and wants to go to his aid, Mr. Spock the one to remind him of non-interference.

While Kirk and Spock are given the lion's share of the episode, the other characters are left behind, mostly literally, with only McCoy beaming down near the end, and Scotty being left in command at the beginning - Sulu doesn't even appear, so I wonder if they wrote this unsure if he'd be back (though the previous episode showed him on the Bridge again)! McCoy's introduction throws more fuel on the fire of whether starships of this era can replicate goods or whether they're manufactured. From this episode it would seem the fanciful creation of a uniform by Replicator in 'DSC' Season 1 may not be as inappropriate as it seemed since the Doctor complains the boots of his Colonel's uniform are too tight and the computer got the measurements wrong. That would suggest it was made by computer, though it could also mean the design was from the computer, but it was actually put together by the Quartermaster (there was one reference in an episode). But it could also be said it would be unlikely a person could put an accurate historical outfit together in the mere minutes it seemed before McCoy beamed down so that weights it towards a computer creation of some kind.

Good use was made of the black and white footage played on the public screen - although they mistakenly showed a very brief clip of Hitler (since Gill is supposed to be the Fuhrer, there would be no Adolf, this isn't a parallel reality!), it's a blink and you'd miss it. The clever thing is using archive footage of a rocket going up and having the announcer say that a Zeon space attack was repulsed, when of course the real footage is just of a planetary rocket, there wouldn't have been any space weapons! We hear Kirk refer to USS again as United Space Ship, and use is made of the upper screens surrounding the Bridge once more to display a photo of John Gill, reminding us they aren't actually pretty pictures, but useable monitors. I also liked that though Spock was able to fix a dismantled Communicator, he had to use the parts from both to do it. And finally, when Spock rattles off his list of dangerous humans from history, the last name must have been made up as I've never heard of 'Lee Kwan,' fitting with their usual tactic of including a fictional future name in with the ones we do know.

Talking of known names, there are several actors who'd had roles in other episodes: most famous would be Skip Homeier (who died in 2017), as Melakon - he'd go on to be the far more interesting Dr. Sevrin in Season 3's 'The Way To Eden.' Bart LaRue had played a similar newscaster in 'Bread and Circuses,' among other voice roles before and after. Ralph Maurer as the SS Lieutenant had been in 'The Return of the Archons.' Ed McCready, an SS Trooper, had several roles, as did 'First Trooper' Paul Baxley, probably best known for Freeman in 'The Trouble With Tribbles.' And that's about all there is to be said about this one, it's not ripe for much discussion or features much to speculate about, which shows up other reasons why it's one of the weaker episodes of the season. Using stock buildings and uniforms may have worked for 'Mission: Impossible' (and that series wasn't a patch on 'TOS'), but it didn't go down so well here. It's not the surroundings that matter so much, though, as the acting, writing and plotting, and also the thought they could have done a truly fascinating story with the pieces, but didn't.

**