Cowboys and Indians and Nazis

by Lorelei Marcus

Thrice recently we have been cautioned of the importance of the Prime Directive, and the consequences if it is not followed properly. While it seemed almost nonexistent as a concept up until halfway through season two, the prime directive now stands as one of the most popular story devices in our recent crop of episodes. "Patterns of Force" is no exception; it can almost entirely be summarized as a less elegant, Nazi flavored clone of "A Piece of the Action", another episode that featured the prime directive prominently.

The Enterprise arrives at planet Ekos in search of John Gill, a cultural scientist sent to observe the planet's primitive culture and development. His recent disappearance sparks the Federation to investigate, and what they find is a planet far beyond what its technological level should be, a society modeled exactly on Nazi Germany, and John Gill as "Führer".

Not since Martin Landau as Martin Bormann have we seen such an effective portrayal of a Nazi.

Like the gangster world in "A Piece of the Action", the Ekosian society's emulation of Earth history is no coincidence, but the result of direct tampering from outside forces. However the tampering of Ekos' evolution began not with the Federation, but their more advanced sister planet, Zeon, which led to Ekos accessing nuclear warheads and a space fleet. Still, even after fifty years relations between the two planets remained peaceful, and only in the past six years did Ekos begin to model a fascist regime. The only explanation is further manipulation from Gill himself.

Filmed at the Reich Building in Beautiful Downtown Burbank!

Kirk and Spock beam down to the planet to try to find Gill and get an explanation. Despite their clever civilian disguises, they are quickly identified as aliens by SS guards. Much judo chop, neck pinch, and uniform stealing high jinks later, they try to infiltrate Nazi headquarters, and are once again discovered thanks to Spock's ears. One obligatory whipping scene later, with some good special-effects for Spock's green blood, and our leads find themselves in prison alongside a Zeon rebel. We learn that the Ekosians plan to wipe out all Zeons both on their own planet and the Zeon home world, their "final solution" as Isak the rebel puts it.

Sweeps week

Horrified, Kirk and Spock fashion a quick escape by using the transponders embedded in their arms for a purpose they were absolutely not intended (turning them into primitive phasers? I'm sure we'll never see this highly useful technology again). With Isak's help, Kirk and Spock join forces with the underground resistance. They plan to infiltrate an elite banquet that night where the Führer is to make an appearance.

Berets and ascots–that's how you know they're resistance

A string of good luck and hidden allies sees them into the banquet, and subsequently the sound booth where Gill gives a speech to the nation initiating the final solution operation. After the speech, they discover that Gill has been drugged, likely by his second in command, who has been the real force pushing for Zeon extermination. Spock performs a Vulcan mind meld to discover why Gill chose to instate a Nazi regime in the first place.

Gill explains that he was only trying to unite a fractured world under an efficient state. He never foresaw such consequences to his actions. Luckily, he is able to give a speech to the people before he dies, and the Holocaust is ultimately called off.

"You won't have John Gill to kick around anymore…"

This story, like "A Piece of the Action", relies on imitative aliens who build their societies around the books and words of outsiders. The sociopolitical situation of two already communicating planets seems too complicated a situation for Gill to have been able to come into and impose an entirely new social structure. I will admit I am a little tired of how Star Trek treats its aliens as if they are children who simply play the Cowboys and Indians they see on TV, rather than think and build for themselves, no matter how primitive the society. For "A Piece of the Action" it worked, particularly because there was a 100 year lead time and a naturally curious and imitative civilization that was infected. This episode was less effective, especially with two pre-existing aliens complicating the mix.

That said, along with its many flaws, there was much to like about the episode. I'll let my co-writers cover the details, but I will say that while the episode was fun to watch, it left me feeling a bit hollow and unconvinced, as if its true purpose for existing was to just put Kirk and Spock in (and occasionally out of) SS uniforms.

Three stars.

Out of Time

by Joe Reid

Having traveled a bit in my time I have come across people who I felt held beliefs and a way of life that held them back from being all that they might be.  Without naming places I can clearly remember times when I thought, “if I could only do something to change how these folks live, they might all be able to make something of themselves.” Faced with places where people lived in poverty, violence was not far.  Never once did I think that struggling people would be better off if we could just make them all Nazis.  This week’s episode failed to adequately answer how a learned historian like John Gill could have come to that conclusion.  I feel like the episode lacked the time needed to explain how that could have come to pass.

It would have been one thing to have taken elements of mid twentieth century German Nazi culture and apply parts of it to make a society better.  After all, I have always been told that under Hitler the trains ran on time (a fallacy to be precise).  It was a total other thing to copy the Nazis whole hog: symbols, behaviors, and uniforms.  The members of the crew that saw what Fuhrer Gill had created all knew how bad the Nazis of history were and were perplexed that it would be repeated.  The brief half-comatose explanation from Gill that Nazis were efficient fell a little shy of the mark.  If we had been given time with a lucid Gill who could have explained why he felt no better options existed, it would have added more credibility to the events as they played out.

"Didn't you see Judgment at Nuremberg?  How about The Brothers Karamozov?"

My next quarrel with the episode is in regard to how quickly it ended.  Within a minute of Gill receiving a fatal shot from his captor, three things happened: The Zeon representatives decided that all of their problems were over and they could take care of things going forward. Kirk considered the planet for admission to Star Fleet, and the ship left the planet.  This leads us to the conclusion that Gill wasn’t wrong at all.  The people were doing great and always would have done great as Nazis as long as no bad people took charge.  That torture, oppression and fear are great tools if you do it without being evil.

Lastly, the motivations of the villain of the episode (Deputy Fuhrer Melakon) went completely unexplained.  He drugged Gill, assumed command, and fought a campaign of oppression against a people for no other reason than, he’s just a bad guy.  If we had only learned that he had a bad history with the Zeons, or that he was one himself and hated it–anything as a motivation–it would have been a good use of time to further the plot.

As it stood, “Patterns of Force” fell too far from believability to be considered a good use of my time.  The leaps that I was asked to make were too far.  Given more time and explanation, perhaps we could have come to a better story.

Two stars.

Springtime for Hitler?

by Janice L. Newman

My feelings on “Patterns of Force” are mixed. There was much to like about the episode. There were two ‘volte-face’ moments that were excellently done. The first caught me by surprise, yet was completely plausible: of course the rebels would want to make certain that the people they were allowing into the heart of their base weren’t secretly Nazi spies. The second moment was cleverly set up, so that it was less of a surprise yet very satisfying. It wasn’t even implausible that there would be Ekosians and Ekosian supporters at high levels of government. After all, Gill would have surrounded himself with good, like-minded people during his rise to power, people like Eneg and Daras’ father. [And don't forget the recent example of Eli Cohen, the Israeli spy who made it to the #3 position in Syria before being caught and executed. (ed.)]

Yet there were elements of the episode that bothered me. For one, other than the aforementioned curveballs, the plot was subtle as a brick, to the point where it threw me out of the episode. Gee, do you think the ‘Ekosians’ might be an especially imitative people (‘echoing’ the culture of others)? Gosh, with names that sound like “Issac” and “Abraham”, how could the people of “Zion” — sorry, I meant “Zeon” — be anything but Jewish?

Funny–they don't look Jewish…

More frustrating than the heavy-handed writing was an important assertion that the story left unchallenged. Even today, there are people who glorify the Nazis and buy into their propaganda. Gill states that Hitler’s regime was the “most efficient state Earth ever knew,” and Spock, the voice of reason, supports and reinforces him! “That tiny country, beaten, bankrupt, defeated, rose in a few years to stand only one step away from global domination.” However, this argument is fundamentally flawed. Just as “Space Seed” fails to challenge the idea that eugenics could work at all, “Patterns of Force” leaves out the fact that Hitler’s success was built on theft, lies, and broken promises long before Germany went to war.

But in the end, my issue with this episode is more emotional than logical. A Piece of the Action does a wonderful job of showing how a culture could be ‘infected’ by another culture. But the Mafioso characters are deliberately cartoonish in their portrayals, fun and larger-than-life and slightly ‘off’. It doesn’t work as well with Nazis. Watching stormtroopers beat and kick and scream at innocent people in the street, seeing them whipping characters I care about, seeing characters I like dressed like Nazis–these things made me uncomfortable. Yes, watching Nazis repeatedly getting knocked out, neck-pinched, shot, and led around by the nose was fun. And yes, I appreciate the message that “Nazis are bad”, even if it was a bit simplistic and unsubtle. But for me, I’d just as soon not see Nazis infect my futuristic science fiction, especially accompanied by mostly unchallenged assertions that they were ever “efficient” or successful.

In quality this was a four-star episode, but my discomfort takes my personal rating down to three stars.

Lord Acton was right

by Gideon Marcus

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely."  It was explicitly referenced in this episode, and it explains a lot.  After watching "Patterns of Force", one of the biggest objections of my fellow watchers to the episode's premise was that resurrecting the Nazis was a bridge too far–too obvious, too ridiculous for a serious historian to consider.

"Hogaaaan!"

But is it really so unbelievable that John Gill, elevated to Godhood to the Ekosians by his knowledge of history and technology long before he became "The Fuhrer", would choose that model?  You and I know (especially if we've read Shirer's Rise and Decline of the Third Reich) that the Hitler regime was anything but "the most efficient the world had ever seen", but would Gill?

We're less than a quarter century from the passing of the most evil government on Earth, yet just last year, the American Nazi party leader was assassinated by one of his henchmen for not being fascist enough. Kids who push counters around on maps in games like Blitzkrieg and Afrika Korps call their clubs "4th SS Panzer", "The Gauleiter Club", "Panzer Lehr Division", and like that.  I have no doubt that, two hundred years from now, there will be historians who miss the point, seduced by dazzling military conquests, Leni Riefenstahl films, and Hugo Boss uniforms.

So, I actually find "Patterns of Force" all too plausible.

I also found it (he said a little sheepishly) quite enjoyable.  With the exception of one clumsy scene edit (the one that ends with Yitzhak saying, "This is more our fight than yours") it's a well put together episode.  Shatner reins in his Shatnerisms, delivering a compelling performance.  Nimoy has the charm one expects of a real ubermensch among people playing at being ubermenschen.  Kelley has a truncated role, but he is at his very best.

"What in blazes is going on here?"

The scoring is an effective mix of library and new music.  The guest stars are quite excellent, actually (though the dubbed "actors" in the first scene on Ekos are some of the worst).

And the showrunners clearly know that women make a big part of their audience.  Why else would the two leads be half-naked for half the episode?

"Very interesting!"

Four stars.

"There's a new episode of Star Trek tomorrow!" "I'll drink to that."