Star Trek Thoughts: The Ultimate Computer
Aug. 20th, 2014 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerAs I got to the end of my Blu-Ray set of the second season of Star Trek, I stepped away from watching what episodes I wanted to watch as they were ordered on the discs (which was how they'd been broadcast in 1967 and 1968, not the order they'd been produced in) to save just one episode for last. "The Ultimate Computer," in which Starfleet installs a supercomputer to run an almost unmanned Enterprise and it goes just about as well as should be expected, doesn't seem high on many lists of most notable and quickly thought of episodes. That sense of it being available as a personal favourite, though, may just add a bit to the interest I've had in its themes and story since I first read James Blish's short-story adaptation of it.
The episode can be seen as a science fiction take on the contemporary anxiety about automation taking jobs away. As if to demonstrate the suggestions the series could narrow to William Shatner grabbing the spotlight with Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley squeezing into most of what's left, Kirk shows just about all of the anxiety with none left for the hundreds of crew members taken off the ship or the handful of lower-ranked people left on board. More than that, though, it can also be viewed as a more oblique reflection on the impassioned arguments that continue over whether people should be sent above the atmosphere at all. In Star Trek the issue appears to have been settled long ago through highly advanced technology and a ready supply of accepted sacrifices to the cause, as suggested by the way McCoy reacts the one time the topic's really brought up, but it's there to be thought about all the same.
Near the end of the second season, the episode does seem to be squeezing dollars. All the action takes place on board the ship with just two big guest stars (one, Commodore Bob Wesley, manages to reference Gene Roddenberry's middle name years before a younger yet more unfortunately regarded character did) and no "crowded corridor" scenes to need lots of extras, and while I didn't set the disc to play the old special effects I understand just about all of them are stock footage from previous episodes. A shot where four of Enterprise's sister ships approach for what they think will be a mock battle was first done with the simplest kind of composite work; with the new special effects it looks more impressive, but the space battle that kicks in after the thoughtful meditations can still be thought of as very much a radio play. In having to squeeze the new effects into the time the old ones would have taken, though, they may make for a space battle at greater ranges than the point-blank ones some people love to look askance at.
I suppose it's easy enough to compare the "M-5 multitronic computer" to the contemporary HAL 9000; without the glosses Arthur C. Clarke provided to how to interpret 2001: A Space Odyssey, the exact explanation for why and when the M-5 ran amok could be a bit more of a matter of personal interpretation. However, I've seen it suggested as pointing back to the human story of its troubled creator Richard Daystrom. (That Daystrom, established in the show as a genius just trying to repeat an early success, was played by a black actor was something I didn't know at first; it maybe shouldn't be made too big a deal but it is still there.) This makes this episode that much more interesting than "technology will run amok; of course, it has to to keep our premise going."
In deciding what episode of the second season to watch last, though, I suppose I was aware there wouldn't be a whole lot to follow in my mental list of interest. As much as this might be inherited second-hand from the opinions of others with only some input from reading the short-story adaptations and other summaries, I do have the impression of the third season as limping to a close, stuck with a slashed budget, production people leaving (including Gene Roddenberry) and everyone left just sort of running out the string before the inevitable cancellation in the suicide timeslot they'd been stuck in, the episodes being more useful to make the show just long enough for syndication than for any other merit. Still, there are times I wonder what a Star Trek that had lasted for five years would have looked like with hairstyles alone changing in the first years of the 1970s...
The episode can be seen as a science fiction take on the contemporary anxiety about automation taking jobs away. As if to demonstrate the suggestions the series could narrow to William Shatner grabbing the spotlight with Leonard Nimoy and DeForest Kelley squeezing into most of what's left, Kirk shows just about all of the anxiety with none left for the hundreds of crew members taken off the ship or the handful of lower-ranked people left on board. More than that, though, it can also be viewed as a more oblique reflection on the impassioned arguments that continue over whether people should be sent above the atmosphere at all. In Star Trek the issue appears to have been settled long ago through highly advanced technology and a ready supply of accepted sacrifices to the cause, as suggested by the way McCoy reacts the one time the topic's really brought up, but it's there to be thought about all the same.
Near the end of the second season, the episode does seem to be squeezing dollars. All the action takes place on board the ship with just two big guest stars (one, Commodore Bob Wesley, manages to reference Gene Roddenberry's middle name years before a younger yet more unfortunately regarded character did) and no "crowded corridor" scenes to need lots of extras, and while I didn't set the disc to play the old special effects I understand just about all of them are stock footage from previous episodes. A shot where four of Enterprise's sister ships approach for what they think will be a mock battle was first done with the simplest kind of composite work; with the new special effects it looks more impressive, but the space battle that kicks in after the thoughtful meditations can still be thought of as very much a radio play. In having to squeeze the new effects into the time the old ones would have taken, though, they may make for a space battle at greater ranges than the point-blank ones some people love to look askance at.
I suppose it's easy enough to compare the "M-5 multitronic computer" to the contemporary HAL 9000; without the glosses Arthur C. Clarke provided to how to interpret 2001: A Space Odyssey, the exact explanation for why and when the M-5 ran amok could be a bit more of a matter of personal interpretation. However, I've seen it suggested as pointing back to the human story of its troubled creator Richard Daystrom. (That Daystrom, established in the show as a genius just trying to repeat an early success, was played by a black actor was something I didn't know at first; it maybe shouldn't be made too big a deal but it is still there.) This makes this episode that much more interesting than "technology will run amok; of course, it has to to keep our premise going."
In deciding what episode of the second season to watch last, though, I suppose I was aware there wouldn't be a whole lot to follow in my mental list of interest. As much as this might be inherited second-hand from the opinions of others with only some input from reading the short-story adaptations and other summaries, I do have the impression of the third season as limping to a close, stuck with a slashed budget, production people leaving (including Gene Roddenberry) and everyone left just sort of running out the string before the inevitable cancellation in the suicide timeslot they'd been stuck in, the episodes being more useful to make the show just long enough for syndication than for any other merit. Still, there are times I wonder what a Star Trek that had lasted for five years would have looked like with hairstyles alone changing in the first years of the 1970s...