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Star Trek
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| Title: | The Return of the Archons |
| Episode Number: | 22 |
| Season: | 1 |
| Season Episode #.: | 22 |
| Production Number: | 6149-22 |
| Original Airdate: | Thursday February 09th, 1967 |
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The Enterprise travels to a planet that was the last known location of a Federation ship, the Archon, that went missing a century ago. Sulu is "infected" with the peacefulness and Kirk must take down a landing party to investigate.They find an Earth-like society that exists in absolute peace... except once a year when they have a Festival and everyone turns violent.
| There are no foreign summaries for this episode
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| This is the first of four times that Kirk destroys an advanced computer by outsmarting it.
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| Kirk: What happened?
Sulu: They're wonderful. They're the sweetest... friendliest people in the universe. It's paradise, my friend. Paradise.
Kirk: Lieutenant O'Neil, where is he?
Sulu: Paradise. Paradise.
| Lawgiver: Tamar. Stand clear.
Tamar: I hear... and obey... the words of Landru...
(The lawgiver discharges his staff and Tamar falls dead.)
| First Lawgiver: It is clear you simply did not understand. I will rephrase. You are ordered to accompany us to the absorption chamber.
| Kirk: It's time you learned that freedom is never a gift. It has to be earned.
| Landru: Your weapons have been neutralized. So it shall be with you.
| Landru: I am Landru. I am he. All that he was I am, his experience, his knowledge.
Kirk: But not his wisdom. He may have programmed you, but he could not have given you a soul. You are a machine.
Landru: Your statement is irrelevant.
| Kirk: Without freedom of choice there is no creativity.
| Kirk: You can get rid of those robes. If I were you, I'd look for another job.
| Spock: Predictably metaphysical. I prefer the concrete, the graspable, the provable.
Kirk: You would make a splendid computer, Mr. Spock.
Spock: That is very kind of you, Captain.
| Lindstrom: Just wanted to say goodbye, Captain.
Kirk: How's it going?
Lindstrom: Couldn 't be better. Already this morning, we've had six domestic quarrels, and two genuine knock-down drag-outs. It may not be paradise, but it's certainly human
| Spock: How often mankind has wished for a world as peaceful and secure as the one Landru provided.
Kirk: Yes. And we never got it. Just lucky, I guess.
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| As the landing party run down the street during Festival, a (fake) rock hits Lindstrom's head. Actor Christopher Held tries to cover but it's obvious the rock is Styrofoam and he barely flinched.
| Either Beta 3's inhabited section is relatively small (which is never indicated), or the Enterprise crew are remarkably lucky. By purely random chance (and plot contrivance), they beam down into the central location of Landru's computer facility. Anywhere else, and they couldn't have got to the computer to convince it to self-destruct.
| Hacom's role in the proceedings isn't clear. He apparently possesses the same immunity to absorption that Reger and Tamar do. But he's not part of their cell and in fact is clearly pro-Landru. Why would Reger and Tamar, underground resistance members, stay near anyone so clearly hostile to their secret plans?
| Underground cells don't work the way described here. Reger should know the identity of both of his fellow cell members, and have some way to contact another cell without knowing who is in it (usually the next one up in the chain of command). Instead, Reger is the only member of the cell who doesn't know who the third member is, which causes exactly the problem seen here: when his contact person (Tamar) dies, he has no way to contact his own third cellmate.
| The reason behind Festival is never explained and in fact seems to contradict everything that is said about Landru and his gentle kind nature. In James Blish' adaptation (taken from the original script, presumably), he briefly explains that Festival served as a kind of "pressure valve" Landru used to let the natives blow off steam periodically - and as a soulless entity's approach to population control (Blish has Lindstrom offer this theory during his final conversation with Kirk).
| Why can't the Enterprise find the wreckage of the Archon? If Landru used the same tactic to kill those who weren't on the planet and available for absorption, it pulled the Archon out of orbit and caused it to crash. A matter/anti-matter engine would make a very large explosion upon striking the planet.
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| As seen here, Spock sleeps with his eyes open.
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| What Changed in the Remastered Version
Remastering added new orbital shots, including some very nice views of the CGI Enterprise model, and (of course) planet Beta III got a nice update. Little else changed; no "heat beams" were added to the orbital shots once Landru began its attack, nor was Landru itself changed. Because much of the episode took place planetside, there were few opportunities for enhanced special effects.
| The Contradiction of Landru's Durability
Dialog within the episode suggests that Landru has ruled Beta III for six thousand years. When Kirk learns Landru's nature he confronts it with this fact and it does not correct him. The construction of any machine that can function for six thousand years, much less one that can organize and control an entire society, is a truly remarkable feat of engineering. Yet Landru is not smart enough to deal with a simple paradox offered it by Kirk, and it burns out. First off, if the machine really is essentially a copy of Landru, its inventor, then it should have had the ability even children have, to simply ignore a paradox if it cannot be solved. Secondly, there is no particular reason it should have felt compelled to obey Kirk's orders or answer his questions - he was not its builder or anyone likely to have legitimate authority over it. Thirdly, even if it got completely bound up trying to solve a paradox, there is no reason for this to cause a catastrophic hardware failure. Humans developed circuit protection (fuses, circuit breakers) almost as soon as we began to harness electricity - surely Landru's builder would have known of such things, given that his science was centuries beyond that of the Federation, which is centuries beyond modern man's. These weaknesses in the climax detract from an otherwise intriguing premise and story.
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