2.3 — “The Practical Joker”
Plot: After sneaking through an energy field to dodge an armada of Romulan fighters, the crew of the Enterprise begins to experience a rash of unwelcome practical jokes.
Thoughts: This episode introduces the Enterprise Rec Room, prototype for the Holodeck, and almost simultaneously, Star Trek’s first Holodeck malfunction. Apparently Gene Rodenberry wanted to deploy a Holodeck-like device in StarTrek as early as Third Season of TOS, but the budget precluded it. This is not my favorite stoytelling device. Still, Trek history is made.
Just as interesting to me is that this episode, first aired on September 21,1974, predates the development of common metaphors about computers. Hence, the “energy” that invades the computer system acts like “bacteria” causing the computer to have a “nervous breakdown.” Today we continue the medical metaphors, but would say that the computer caught a “virus” and became “infected.” Wikipedia says the term virus was first used in a paper to specifically refer to a self-reproducing computer program in 1984.
Beyond that we have a fairly slight, but amusing, episode. It bothers me that ship-to-ship combat with Klingons and Romulans is treated so cavalierly in this series. It seems to be just a fact of starship life, often ending humorously, not with death, destruction, war, or interstellar incidents. It’s like they’re just playing Cowboys & Indians on the final frontier for no stakes.
The theme of an intelligent shipboard computer turning on is crew is an evergreen and resilient science fiction plot, familiar of course to early 1970s audiences from 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). A similar concept was used in the second season TOS episode, “The Ultimate Computer,” but with graver consequences.
2.5 out of 5 cream pies in the face.
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