TOS: Patterns of Force

[CharlesPhipps]

Given what happens, does anyone believe the writers actually thought Nazism was a good idea?

Mind you there's a weird habit I've noticed that efficiency is held up as the highest good.

Like, "they're murdering people in the streets but it's alright as long as they're the fastest most competent murderers they can be."

I don't think they thought it was a good idea. Though they may have had to try and find some positive spin to put on it, in order for the story to work as written. Portraying Nazism accurately would make John Gill a lunatic who'd never be sent on a mission of this sort and it would say rather nasty things about the Federation itself. It's a plot that ought to have been thought through WAY more then it was, is my point.

Mind you, it makes perfect sense if John Gill just wanted to play God as being the Furher is a pretty sweet deal if you're a sick sociopath.

Frankly, Death of the Author and Occam's Razor is that Kirk and Spock keep trying to find a positive spin (as above) to the fact that someone they knew as well as respected went completely off the rails like Jacob's father in MASS EFFECT 2.

[MightyDavidson]

Given what happens, does anyone believe the writers actually thought Nazism was a good idea?

Mind you there's a weird habit I've noticed that efficiency is held up as the highest good.

Like, "they're murdering people in the streets but it's alright as long as they're the fastest most competent murderers they can be."

I don't think they thought it was a good idea. Though they may have had to try and find some positive spin to put on it, in order for the story to work as written. Portraying Nazism accurately would make John Gill a lunatic who'd never be sent on a mission of this sort and it would say rather nasty things about the Federation itself. It's a plot that ought to have been thought through WAY more then it was, is my point.

Mind you, it makes perfect sense if John Gill just wanted to play God as being the Furher is a pretty sweet deal if you're a sick sociopath.

Frankly, Death of the Author and Occam's Razor is that Kirk and Spock keep trying to find a positive spin (as above) to the fact that someone they knew as well as respected went completely off the rails like Jacob's father in MASS EFFECT 2.

Well that does make more sense then the story we got. I mean "John Gill is a madman who deliberately set out to make a Nazi planet" might not be the greatest story but it sure beats "I want to improve these people's lives, let's try Nazism, what could go wrong?" by light years.

[Admiral X]

Given what happens, does anyone believe the writers actually thought Nazism was a good idea?

I doubt it. As I said, my take is that this episode was constructed entirely around the access to sets and costumes from another production in order to artificially raise the production quality of the episode, and the writing was basically a hack job to try to make it work. This seems to be supported by just how much dialog is spent explaining how everything about the Nazis has been recreated so exactly, to the point that it comes off like a confession by whoever wrote this that they recognize how absurd it is themselves.

Mind you there's a weird habit I've noticed that efficiency is held up as the highest good.

Like, "they're murdering people in the streets but it's alright as long as they're the fastest most competent murderers they can be."

I think the focus on efficiency is the idea of government or organizational misallocations of funding or at least the perception of that. Like the idea that the country is only dirt poor and everyone is miserable because a few fat cats are hording everything for themselves, and this could all go away if only a benevolent dictator or leadership bureau could run everything in a way that would allocate resources where they would be put to the best use. A kind of benevolent micromanaging, as it were, that just somehow works because reasons.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Mind you there's a weird habit I've noticed that efficiency is held up as the highest good.

Like, "they're murdering people in the streets but it's alright as long as they're the fastest most competent murderers they can be."

I think the focus on efficiency is the idea of government or organizational misallocations of funding or at least the perception of that. Like the idea that the country is only dirt poor and everyone is miserable because a few fat cats are hording everything for themselves, and this could all go away if only a benevolent dictator or leadership bureau could run everything in a way that would allocate resources where they would be put to the best use. A kind of benevolent micromanaging, as it were, that just somehow works because reasons.

From what I'm gathering, efficiency is more capital based. The state of the German economy was in shambles due to reparations and also the Great Depression. People in the 60's speculated that Hitler invigorated the economy with industrial strength. The establishment of the Autobahn and the conception of Volkswagen was tied to that as well. This was all pre-war of course, and outsider looks on things suggested that he had produced a thriving economy in due time with what he called a 4 year plan.

[Fianna]

Gene Roddenberry seemed to have fully embraced the idea of parallel evolution. If another planet can produce people identical to human beings from Earth, then there's no reason they couldn't develop identical cultures as well. That's a well that TOS went to often, and how much the show felt like that needed some additional explanation seems to depend on who was doing the script.

[Madner Kami]

The establishment of the Autobahn and the conception of Volkswagen was tied to that as well.

Well, see, that is the funny part. Germany was in economic turmoil, because between reparations, the great despression and a constant undeclared civil war going on since 1919, it was hard to get things going again. But, Germany was recovering and recovering well at that already, when Hitler finally came into a position of power. The Autobahnen were a project of the Weimarer Republik, not Hitler. The Nazis just hi-jacked it. Also, in regard to the reparations, Germany, the UK and eventually France agreed to the "Hoover Moratorium" in 1931, basically suspending the payment of reparations for a year and then, during 1932, at the Lausanne Conference of 1932, payments were suspended indefinitly, although Belgium and France still wanted reparations, but postponed their demands for the time being as well.

And then came Hitler. Allegedly the German economy suddenly recoved magically. What few people realize or know is, that not only was the german economy already well underway to recovery, but that the Nazis "financed" the sudden economic growth and the remilitarization, by basically creating a snowball system of bonds. I can't quite remember what they were called, but in essence, it was nothing but an I.O.U., which ended up as yet another reason for Germany's agression. The system was about to collapse in 1939, making the War an even greater necessity, with known consequences.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

The establishment of the Autobahn and the conception of Volkswagen was tied to that as well.

Well, see, that is the funny part. Germany was in economic turmoil, because between reparations, the great despression and a constant undeclared civil war going on since 1919, it was hard to get things going again. But, Germany was recovering and recovering well at that already, when Hitler finally came into a position of power. The Autobahnen were a project of the Weimarer Republik, not Hitler. The Nazis just hi-jacked it. Also, in regard to the reparations, Germany, the UK and eventually France agreed to the "Hoover Moratorium" in 1931, basically suspending the payment of reparations for a year and then, during 1932, at the Lausanne Conference of 1932, payments were suspended indefinitly, although Belgium and France still wanted reparations, but postponed their demands for the time being as well.

And then came Hitler. Allegedly the German economy suddenly recoved magically. What few people realize or know is, that not only was the german economy already well underway to recovery, but that the Nazis "financed" the sudden economic growth and the remilitarization, by basically creating a snowball system of bonds. I can't quite remember what they were called, but in essence, it was nothing but an I.O.U., which ended up as yet another reason for Germany's agression. The system was about to collapse in 1939, making the War an even greater necessity, with known consequences.

Mefo bills.

[Madner Kami]

MeFo-Wechsel, that's it, thanks! I came back to MAFEA-bonds, but that was kind of a different reality (it's the german translation and equivalent for CHOAM).

[Maximara]

Given what happens, does anyone believe the writers actually thought Nazism was a good idea?

Mind you there's a weird habit I've noticed that efficiency is held up as the highest good.

Like, "they're murdering people in the streets but it's alright as long as they're the fastest most competent murderers they can be."

I don't think they thought it was a good idea. Though they may have had to try and find some positive spin to put on it, in order for the story to work as written. Portraying Nazism accurately would make John Gill a lunatic who'd never be sent on a mission of this sort and it would say rather nasty things about the Federation itself. It's a plot that ought to have been thought through WAY more then it was, is my point.

But there was a lot of "accuracy" with John Gill's version of Naziism.

SPOCK: Why do the Nazis hate Zeons?
ISAK: Why? Because without us to hate, there'd be nothing to hold them together. So the Party has built us into a threat, a disease to be wiped out.

DARAS: I'm an Ekosian fighting the terrible thing that's happened to my people. The decoration was for betraying my own father to the Party. It was my father's idea. You see, he used to be very close to the Fuhrer. Then he saw the changes and where they were leading. He turned against the Party. They imprisoned him. Melakon sentenced him to death.

GILL: Planet fragmented. Divided. Took lesson from Earth history.
KIRK: But why Nazi Germany? You studied history. You knew what the Nazis were.
GILL: Most efficient state Earth ever knew.

But as I have already pointed out that simply was not true. Nazi Germany was terribly inefficient. There are far better examples from history on how to unite a people. Why not go back further and use Otto Von Bismarck's methods? Or Tokugawa Ieyasu's (First shogun of a unified Japan)? I think even an armchair historian could come up with dozens of better ideas.

As for saying something bad about the Federation we and and would see plenty of that:

Doctor Adams who had "done more to revolutionise, to humanise prisons and the treatment of prisoners than all the rest of humanity had done in forty centuries" was secretly torturing his patients

Commodore Matt Decker becomes so obsessed with destroying a planet-destroying robot that he flies a shuttle into the mouth of the thing.[20] Interestingly, Kirk seems to be going down this very same path in "Obsession", but how he handles it is very different from Decker.

Doctor Richard Daystrom whose duotronic breakthrough won him the Nobel and Zee-Magnes prizes, had his engrams put into his computer, which quickly loses it and starts killing people, followed by Daystrom himself losing it and stating, "We're invincible. Look what we've done. Your mighty starships, four toys to be crushed as we choose," followed by Spock giving the obviously crazy man the Vulcan neck pinch.

Captain Garth of Izar whose exploits were required reading, who has totally lost it and compares himself to Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Lee Kuan, Krotus (last two are would-be conquerors)[

Dr. Janice Lester, who was presumably a competent Starfleet officer with a legitimate complaint about discrimination in the service, goes off the deep end and resorts to a rather creepy kidnapping scheme to get what she always wanted.

Then there is that idiocy about needing to see to captain a starship given in "Is There no Truth in Beauty?" Uh, why? Other then the viewscreen what can the captain directly see?

[pilight]

A key point to remember is Starfleet has only been out of contact with Gill for six months but what we see should have taken years to achieve so how long has he been mucking around with this planet?

Either he was lying to Starfleet about what he was doing or they knew he was turning the Ekosians into space Nazis and waited until now to do something about it.