2.21 — “Patterns of Force”
Plot: The Enterprise enters a system with two inhabited planets. It is looking for history professor John Gill, previously sent there on a cultural mission. Kirk and Spock find the inner planet overrun by soldiers wearing Nazi uniforms. Earth Nazis, how curious! A viewscreen indicates that John Gill is the Führer of the state (planet?). After this, it is logical to steal some Nazi uniforms and try to infiltrate the mysterious Führer’s inner sanctum. It is also logical for Kirk and Spock to lose their shirts, and get whipped by a cat of nine tails. I have a headache.
Thoughts: It takes some brass balls (ovaries?) to do an episode in which your leads all dress up as Nazis. That doesn’t, however, automatically make it a good idea.
The producers do like to play dress up with Leonard Nimoy. That is a good idea.
The episode doesn’t really hold together, and at times becomes borderline offensive. Hahaha, let’s psychoanalyze the Nazis and show how the evil they caused could have easily been avoided.
The story tries to make points about the inherent dangers of power, even accumulated for a benign purpose, while having as much fun as it can raiding Paramount’s costume closet. It’s too simple though. Oh really–totalitarianism might be just fine, if only the leaders aren’t psychopathic jerks?
This is another non-interference directive episode. These are coming fast and furious in Season Two, after “The Apple,” “A Piece of the Action,” and “A Private Little War.” In some ways “Patterns of Force” is very derivative of previous episodes. Gill is just another famous leader gone bad on an away mission, like Kurtz in Heart of Darkness–or Adams and Korby in “Dagger of the MInd” and “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” I will grant that the producers have succeeded, once again, in creating a vibe that is completely different from the preceding 49 episodes (holy cow! this is episode 50!). The episode with all the Nazis does tend to stand out in the memory.
I found two interesting tidbits reading Memory Alpha (http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Patterns_of_Force):
1. This episode marks the only time, in any Star Trek series or film, that actor Leonard Nimoy is seen on camera not wearing a shirt; and
2. The episode’s thesis that Germany, and especially Nazi Germany, was the “most efficient” state in history, was popular in 1960s America; it is, however, strongly denied by modern historians that point to the many bloated, competing bureaucracies with ill-defined areas of competence that existed in that period, mostly financed with stolen and expropriated funds.
A generous 2 of 5 rubindium crystals.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patterns_of_Force_(Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series)
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