A Taste of Armageddon

Inherent in the notion that good always triumphs over evil – certainly one of the big premises of a series like the original Trek – is the question of why evil should exist at all. If God is omniscient, omnipotent and perfectly good, then why is there suffering in the universe? The question – called theodicy, to put the proper philosophical label on it – receives an interesting answer in this episode.

But before we get to such lofty concerns, we have a more down-to-earth issue to resolve: is every UFP government official a jerkweed in a ridiculous suit? First it was the High Commissioner in “Galileo Seven,” and now it’s Ambassador Robert Fox (Gene Lyons), the most egregious case of can’t-you-see-what’s-going-on-around-you since the liberal pinhead scientist in The Thing from Another World.

The ambassador is the reason the Enterprise is in orbit around Eminiar VII, a planet with which Fox is supposed to establish diplomatic relations. Even after the Eminiarian officials warn Kirk to leave with all deliberate speed, Fox insists that they stay. And when an away team of the usual suspects (Kirk, Spock and an assortment of supporting cast and red shirts) beams down to make sure everything’s safe enough for the diplomat, things really get interesting.

Apparently Eminiar has been at war with Vendikar, a neighboring world, for several centuries. The news comes as a surprise, because the planet shows none of the devastation one might expect from such an extended conflict. The lack of wreckage is caused by the way the war has been fought. The two planets use computers to play a giant war game, and in any place declared “destroyed” by the game all of the people have to report to special chambers and be disintegrated.

Vendikar launches an attack. The good news is that the away team isn’t in a part of the city declared “hit” by the computer. The bad news is that the machine has declared the Enterprise a casualty. The Eminiarians now expect the entire crew to transport to the surface and report for disintegration. And they open fire on the ship when their request is denied.

Somehow or another, Fox and his aide manage to side-step Scotty’s no-beaming-down order and beam down. Needless to say, he swiftly finds himself in the to-be-disintegrated line. Fortunately for him, Spock has used his heretofore-unrevealed psychic ability to open doors with the power of his mind, and the away team has escaped from custody. They torch a couple of the dreaded chambers (including the one that would have hosted Fox) and then head for Eminiarian high command.

The governments of the two warring planets refuse to stop their neutron-bomb-in-a-phone-booth war, so Kirk decides to stop it for them. Acting as if the Prime Directive never existed, he blows up the war-waging computers. The good folks of Eminiar start spazzing all over the place, fearing that if they’re deprived of their bloodthirsty pretend conflict that they’ll have to fight a real nuclear conflict with the enemy. Kirk points out that the people of Vendikar might be just as afraid of open war as they are, which turns out to be correct. A peace is negotiated, and all’s well that ends well.

So the question is resolved. War is supposed to be awful, because if it isn’t then there’s no incentive to avoid it. That’s way more philosophy than one would generally expect from an hour of prime time network programming.

Episode rating:

Stardate: 3192.1

Episode type: Message piece

Written by: Robert Hamner and Gene L. Coon

Original air date: February 23, 1967

Space Seed / This Side of Paradise

Back to the Star Trek index