Star Trek Thoughts: A Taste of Armageddon
Jul. 29th, 2013 08:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerIn having already experienced a good number of Star Trek episodes through the "secondary source" of James Blish's short-story adaptations, I suppose I've had some favourites for quite a while now. One of those was "A Taste of Armageddon," in which Captain Kirk and his landing party get stranded on a world that's been fighting a war for five centuries by computer and disposing of those designated as casualties in disintegration chambers. On getting around to watching the actual episode at last, I did notice a good number of silly hats. However, this didn't altogether distract me from the idea I'd long been contemplating...
It might be that I can see the idea of an "almost simulated war" as something that might have been a satirical science fiction short story in the 1950s, although there I can imagine the viewpoint character would be stuck in the society and wind up being ground up in its gears. As with other satirical SF, the solution to the problem posed might seem "obvious" to us, but the point might be not so much solid extrapolation as just getting the audience to ask questions. Perhaps, though, I've been guilty of contrasting this episode to overheard stereotypes of "later" Star Trek series as either dwelling on built-in characteristics of the main cast or being started by problems with and resolved by adjustments to the onboard bafflegab generators. In any case, for some perhaps peculiar reason the introduction of the system made me think of 1960s paranoia about "computers"; however, the Enterprise's own onboard computer is put to good use at one point as well.
It might be that I can see the idea of an "almost simulated war" as something that might have been a satirical science fiction short story in the 1950s, although there I can imagine the viewpoint character would be stuck in the society and wind up being ground up in its gears. As with other satirical SF, the solution to the problem posed might seem "obvious" to us, but the point might be not so much solid extrapolation as just getting the audience to ask questions. Perhaps, though, I've been guilty of contrasting this episode to overheard stereotypes of "later" Star Trek series as either dwelling on built-in characteristics of the main cast or being started by problems with and resolved by adjustments to the onboard bafflegab generators. In any case, for some perhaps peculiar reason the introduction of the system made me think of 1960s paranoia about "computers"; however, the Enterprise's own onboard computer is put to good use at one point as well.