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krpalmerIn starting to watch some episodes of Star Trek, I suppose I had the impression this would be no more complicated than finally seeing the primary source of something I'd long known all about from secondary sources. With "The Conscience of the King," though, there did seem to still be some surprises. More than that, there were things about the episode that interested me that won't give away all of my surprises.
The basic story of the episode, established before the opening credits, is the question "Is the travelling Shakespearean actor Anton Karidian actually 'Kodos the Executioner?'" Remembering a comment or two I'd seen before, I contemplated being told the executions happened twenty years ago seems as if it would have been an invitation to its original audience to think back two decades to the Second World War. From there, I did wonder a bit if in Kodos ordering half his colony's population executed so the survivors (selected according to Kodos's eugenically set guidelines) wouldn't starve but this amounting to four thousand deaths was somehow a "TV-safe" number; still, "too many people and too little food" is a regular fear for the future. It just so happened one point in the episode was Kirk having survived the executions; this made me wonder, again, a bit about "consequence-light developments," but I can suppose the alternative might have come across as the Enterprise once more being an interstellar busybody. In any case, there do seem to develop hints of Kirk's involvement not being altogether dispassionate.
Kirk also manages to romance Karidian's daughter Lenore, and this, I admit, did prompt me to thoughts of the captain being up to his usual tricks. So help me, though, there was one cut from a bit of the romance I could see being fit into at least one particular shade of the "Kirk/Spock" interpretation...
The basic story of the episode, established before the opening credits, is the question "Is the travelling Shakespearean actor Anton Karidian actually 'Kodos the Executioner?'" Remembering a comment or two I'd seen before, I contemplated being told the executions happened twenty years ago seems as if it would have been an invitation to its original audience to think back two decades to the Second World War. From there, I did wonder a bit if in Kodos ordering half his colony's population executed so the survivors (selected according to Kodos's eugenically set guidelines) wouldn't starve but this amounting to four thousand deaths was somehow a "TV-safe" number; still, "too many people and too little food" is a regular fear for the future. It just so happened one point in the episode was Kirk having survived the executions; this made me wonder, again, a bit about "consequence-light developments," but I can suppose the alternative might have come across as the Enterprise once more being an interstellar busybody. In any case, there do seem to develop hints of Kirk's involvement not being altogether dispassionate.
Kirk also manages to romance Karidian's daughter Lenore, and this, I admit, did prompt me to thoughts of the captain being up to his usual tricks. So help me, though, there was one cut from a bit of the romance I could see being fit into at least one particular shade of the "Kirk/Spock" interpretation...