“When the Enterprise travels to a planet where a Starfleet ship disappeared years ago, they find a tyrannical computer that rules its oppressed people”
We open on Sulu and another crewman, O’Neil, dressed in sort of Western outfits and running through an empty street. O’Neil falls, and Sulu helps him up, but O’Neil says there are too many of them.
Figures in brown cloaks are approaching. They call the Enterprise to be beamed up, but O’Neil runs away. One of the cloaked people points a staff at Sulu, who freezes, then gets a dopey smile on his face just as he’s beamed up.
Aboard the Enterprise, Sulu won’t say where O’Neil is, and says the planet is paradise.
***
Kirk leads another landing party to the surface. They notice everyone looks as stoned as Sulu. Then one of the locals asks if they’re there for the festival, which starts at 6:00 - “the red hour.”
While they’re negotiating for a place to stay, with a man named Reger, the clock strikes 6, and everybody LOSES THEIR FUCKING MINDS. Rocks we thrown, people attack each other, people start making out in the middle of the street.
The landing party makes it to Reger’s house, where three older men think it’s very strange that these younger men aren’t outside participating in the festival. Reger’s daughter, Tula, is outside, but Reger doesn’t intend to bring her back in.
Reger shows the landing party upstairs, but one of the old men insists that the Lawgivers need to know.
Kirk asks Reger about the festival, and about Landru, who was mentioned before. Before Reger answers, though, we cut to Kirk watching the chaos out the window.
***
At 6am, the clock strikes again, and everybody stops what they’re doing and goes back to acting stoned.
Kirk is waking up the landing party when he hears screaming in the hallway - Tula is back, and hysterical. Reger is trying to calm her down. McCoy and Spock take Tula away, and McCoy gives her a sedative.
One of the crewmen, Lindstrom, says Reger didn’t even try to bring her back in. Reger says it was the will of Landru. Kirk asks about Landru again, and Reger declares him to be “not of the body.”
One of the old men from earlier asks if they’re Archons. Kirk doesn’t deny it, but the other old man shows up with two men in brown cloaks, who shoot the first old man. Then they say Kirk and crew will be absorbed. Kirk says they won’t go, and the browncloaks don’t know what to do, so they just stand in the doorway looking at each other.
After a moment, they turn back and say clearly Kirk didn’t understand, and it is the word of Landru that they go to the absorption chambers. Kirk says they’ll see Landru in their own time, and takes one of their weapons. Spock determines that it’s a hollow tube, not a weapon at all.
Reger tells them he’ll take them to safety. They begin walking through the streets, where everyone seems to be back to normal, but then suddenly everyone stops, and picks up bricks, clubs, etc. Reger says Landru has “summoned the body.”
Kirk orders phasers to stun, and they shoot their way through the crowd. One of the townspeople is actually O’Neil, who Reger says has been absorbed. They bring him along.
Reger leads them into what looks like a dungeon. Set recycling is strong with this episode. Reger turns on a light, which is from before Landru. Spock points out that this technology is to advanced for the current culture.
Turns out Reger is part of an anti-Landru movement. If O’Neil wakes up, he’ll be able to alert Landru, so Kirk has McCoy sedate him.
Turns out the underground movement started with the Archons, who came from the sky. Kirk finally puts together that these are people from the ship they’ve been looking for, the USS Archon. Duh. He contacts the Enterprise and finds out they’re under attack.
Suddenly, Landru appears. He declares the Enterprise crew to be an infection, and they will be absorbed. There’s a weird noise, and everyone dramatically passes out.
They wake up in what looks like another part of the same room. McCoy and O’Neil are missing, along with their phasers.
Spock declares it to be interesting that the lawgivers’ response to the unexpected was like a computer with insufficient data.
Just then, McCoy is returned. He’s been absorbed and doesn’t remember Kirk or the Enterprise. The lawgivers then take Kirk away.
While Kirk is strapped to a wall, a man in an orange robe relieves the lawgivers. Meanwhile, Spock mind melds with McCoy and determined him to be under extremely powerful mind control. Then the lawgivers return to take Spock away.
Kirk appears to have been absorbed as well, so now it’s Spock’s turn. But, as I kind of expected, the man in the orange robe (Marplon) is part of the anti-Landru underground. He releases Spock and tells him that Kirk wasn’t absorbed. He returns their phasers and says he was too late to help McCoy, so they have to be careful not to let on.
Spock and Kirk determine that Landru is done kind of computer, and they need to destroy it. Spock invokes the Prime Directive, that they can’t interfere, but Kirk says it doesn’t apply to a stagnant culture like this one (interesting interpretation but ok).
Reger and Marplon enter, and return their communicators. Kirk says they’ll need their help to get rid of Landru, but McCoy overhears and starts screaming that Kirk is a traitor. They start awkwardly strangling each other, and Kirk’s puts McCoy in a sleeper hold. Two lawmakers enter, and Kirk and Spock knock them out and take their robes.
Spock contacts the Enterprise, and discovers they only have 6 hours left before their orbit decays and they crash. Kirk tells Scotty to put a guard on Sulu.
Kirk asks Reger and Marplon to take them to Landru, but Reger panics and Spock has to neck-pinch him.
Marplon takes them to the Hall of Audiences. Landru appears creepily and stares at them. He says that for the good of the body, they must die, along with anyone who knows about them.
Spock declares Landru to be a projection. They fire their phasers at him and blast a hole through the wall, revealing a computer. Before they can shoot the computer, it neutralizes their phasers.
The computer insists it is Landru. Kirk tells it that Landru is dead. The computer says that’s irrelevant. Kirk and Spock convince the computer that it is harming the people it’s controlling, and it dramatically self-destructs.
Kirk contacts the Enterprise and is informed that they are no longer under attack, and Sulu is back to normal. Sulu demonstrates this by shrugging in a goofy classic-Takei manner and relieving the helmsman. The landing party returns to the Enterprise.
Lindstrom and some other experts are remaining behind to help everyone get back to normal. Kirk tells Spock he’d make an excellent computer, which Spock takes as a compliment.
***
So this is another concept episode that probably worked a lot better back when it was new than it does now after multiple parodies. I can’t fault it for the things that came later. But I do like that it popped up again in Lower Decks as a critique of the Federation - sure, Kirk and all solved the immediate problem, but what were the long-term effects? And again, that isn’t an issue with the episode itself, it’s more speaking to the Federation as it’s been written ever since.
Also, mainstream audiences in the 60s had less exposure to ambiguity in film and TV. Not zero, I’m certain, but can you imagine, say, Breaking Bad filmed in the 60s? It’s an interesting concept that came across as very black and white because of what could she couldn’t be shown, and what people overall would and wouldn’t accept.
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