TOS: A Taste of Armageddon

[Darth Wedgius]

This is the only TOS episode where I sympathize with the TNG-ish Prime Directive more. Kirk seems to end their war because he doesn't approve of their choices in the matter more than to save his ship and crew. While I sympathize with valuing the people's livers more than the culture (which is why I'm always Kirk > Picard), it as, after all, in Kirk's words, "their planet."

And letting them sacrifice 500 Eminiarans to make up for the Enterprise crew getting away would have made for an interesting moral dilemma. Even if it's due to Fox's decision to violate the sovereign territory an of alien government (against the explicit wishes of that government), it's Kirk's ship, Kirk's people, and Kirk's collection of Green Animal Woman Monthly at stake.

[Formless One]

My biggest question is why the hell the Computer decided that one side would open fire on a neutral third party ship of a nation that could easily glass both planets if they felt like it. I can understand why the people follow it, they've been doing it for hundreds of years after all.

It'd be like if India and Pakistan went to war again, and one of the decided to start firing missiles at US or Russian, or Chinese ships sent to help mediate the situation.


Seems like those computers need a firmware update.

Remember that previously another Federation ship had gone into the sector and never returned. Its implied that the reason for that is that Eminar 4 or the people they were fighting against destroyed their ship and killed the crew. So they probably didn't count on the next ship to be sent in to be the flagship of said interstellar civilization, which was built to survey planets and blow up Klingons. The Enterprise's phasers even out-ranged their disruptors, so it seems that despite having to take a diplomat with the skull of a caveman, Starfleet probably took a "once burned, twice learned" approach to the situation and surprised the Eminarians in the process.

You know, its funny to me how people sometimes react to this episode and, in particular, the existence of General Order 24. I was just reading another forum thread from a couple years ago where everyone seemed insistent that this thing would have vanished by the time of TNG because it just didn't seem like the kind of thing Picard would order. Except, of course, the time that he wanted to use the Borg drone, Hugh, as a weapon to completely annihilate the Collective. But that wasn't an orbital bombardment, so apparently people don't think it counts? I've read on Memory Alpha that the spirit of the order was probably explained in another TOS episode, but I actually think its probably best explained in I Borg, and would explain why it is considered a General Order like the Prime Directive is. And would also explain Janeway's violation of the Prime Directive in Unimatrix Zero, come to think of it... when your civilization qualifies as a threat which cannot be reasoned with, the PD no longer applies to you.

I don't know, just some stray thoughts I had after watching the review.

[ghengilhar]

So, just want to make a quick point. When they talk about the sound disruptor that hits the Enterprise what makes it even sillier is the size of the blast they are hit with. 1.8 ^13 decibels (which is actually acceptable since the shock wave can be converted to joules) which is more than enough to destroy the Enterprise, in fact since decibels are a logarithmic scale that amount of energy would not only destroy the Enterprise but the entire Universe!

[TerranceMonster]

They should be thankful no Klingon vessels passed through their star system or they would've been in deep shit. The Klingon Empire would not have been as nice about all that as Kirk and the Federation.

[Nevix]

The cost of letting war go too long is a meaningless sacrifice of lives.

The cost of ending a war early is a meaningless yet meaningful sacrifice of lives to recover the achievements lost due to ending a war early.

War isn't pretty, but it serves a necessary function to protect borders, oppose tyranny, free the oppressed, and more.

Sadly, it also serves to spread chaos, destruction, filth and tyranny.

So, never forget: Evil triumphs when good does nothing.

[Edvarius]

This is the only TOS episode where I sympathize with the TNG-ish Prime Directive more. Kirk seems to end their war because he doesn't approve of their choices in the matter more than to save his ship and crew. While I sympathize with valuing the people's livers more than the culture (which is why I'm always Kirk > Picard), it as, after all, in Kirk's words, "their planet."

Technically speaking he didn't end the war, he just destroyed the means to continue it in the manner which had threatened his ship and crew. After he left they could have started peace talks, or gone on with the war using actual weapons, or possibly even negotiated a ceasefire long enough to build another supercomputer and repaired the destroyed disintegration chambers and gone on as before. They threatened him in a specific manner, and he destroyed the means to do so in that manner again while he was around, which also sent a message about Starfleet's feelings as a whole (as he is a representative and that is their flagship) about being dragged into their "simulation" were and what the likely outcome would be if they tried it again.

Being able to get on his moral high horse and make a speech is just a bonus.

You know, its funny to me how people sometimes react to this episode and, in particular, the existence of General Order 24.

Hey, you only have to encounter a planet like SR388 once before you start lobbying for something like General Order 24 to get on the books.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Okay Edvarius. I know that SR388 is somehow involved in Metroid games, but I'm unable to glean your meaning beyond that. Please elaborate.

[cdrood]

I have some disagreement on this episode. I feel the "war" to be weak. War's have reasons for existing, even if they are stupid. Territory, ideology, someone stepped on a flower and earned the death penalty, etc. This one has none of that. Even if it's forgotten or don't matter, there's at least the rhetoric that "the enemy are a bunch of baby killing fascist drug dealers who park in the handicapped spot" to keep things going. There's none of that here. There's no goal, not even destroying the "enemy"

They even got along so well with Vendakar to be able to set up a two way computer system that controls a planetwide system of disintegration chambers and immediately detects non-compliance. Why couldn't/wouldn't they have ended the war when this system was negotiated? Neither side has anything the other wants, obviously; including their annihilation.

This isn't war. It's population control. That would have made this a much better episode than Mark of Gideon on that subject AND made this episode much better since the "war" is weak"

[cdrood]

This episode always intrigued me. I never particularly believed in the idea that we have wars simply because "humans are savages who are driven to kill". This may be an oversimplification, but I've always seen it as people starting wars for (usually) one of two reasons - because we want something from them, or we find their culture so distasteful that we feel it needs to be destroyed. We know the latter wasn't happening, they explicitly said the whole reason they did this was so their culture could continue to grow while having a "war". As for the former, I suppose it's possible that each side were re-settling fully intact cities and such after the previous population finished vaporizing themselves, but there was nothing in the story to suggest this. It seemed like neither side never really left their home planet.

So what exactly were either side getting out of this war? They've both given up any specific achievement from this conflict. Both sides are basically sacrificing millions of people a year to get the exact same thing they'd get by not sacrificing millions of people a year. At this point, making peace would be so much easier. Why would either side agree to this in the first place? Who said "we should have a war with all the death, but none of the potential benefits"?

As an aside, the female Red Shirt in this episode was quite attractive. Geez, two posts in and I'm already starting a theme.

Exactly, which is why they should have revealed it to be a massive fraud to in order to keep the population at a stable level. I also don't get how they tally the deaths. The Enterprise is a target and everyone on it dies. However, Mea 3 is standing right next to Kirk, but no one else in the room is apparently a fatality.

[Rocketboy1313]

Just dark speculation, but what either side gets from the war is a population sink. Millions die every year that must be replaced. Therefore you can and need a higher birth rate and if you have an unemployable or undesirable population demographic it wouldn't be hard to leave them strategically uncovered...

Or maybe you straight up program the computer to prefer those you want rid of. No muss, no fuss, no opposition.

Why not take it a step further?

There is no war, there is one government monitoring both planets and they just periodically purge millions of undesirables.

"Since about that time, war had been literally continuous, though strictly speaking it had not always been the same war. For several months during his childhood there had been confused street fighting in London itself, some of which he remembered vividly. But to trace out the history of the whole period, to say who was fighting whom at any given moment, would have been utterly impossible, since no written record, and no spoken word, ever made mention of any other alignment than the existing one. At this moment, for example, in 1984..."