Star Trek Retrospective: Episode 50 Patterns of Force
This is an episode that seemed really cool back in the 70’s but if someone tried to make it today they would be keel hauled. Damn political correctness anyway. John Gill’s choice to use Nazi Germany as a model for saving the Ekos economy could probably be classified under the “Seemed like a good idea at the time” heading (incidentally that is exactly what I want on my tombstone. No joke) but even as a political move it is a step towards disaster. Any time you ostracize or alienate an outside culture it is almost inevitable that humans (or human-like aliens) will take it to the odious extreme.
However I do appreciate the fact that this and A Piece of the Action are two episodes that did not try to convince us that an alien culture could so exactly parallel Earth that they get the exact same uniforms and names. At least John Gill would have had some inkling what an SS uniform was supposed to look like, although if I were him I might have used some of the principals behind the rejuvenation of Germany without using, say, swastikas, SS, or the name Nazi. Might look better at your inevitable trial.
The best part of this episode is the head Nazi talking about how racially inferior Spock is and how his skull indicates low intellect. If only he knew. Of course Kirk had already told Spock how he looks like a great Nazi. Not sure how I would take that if I were Leonard Nimoy. This new image of the main three I just uploaded to the Star Trek T Shirt category.
Interestingly enough this was the only episode banned in Germany until 1995. Some people have no sense of humor whatsoever. It has been my experience when speaking to Germans that they all like to pretend the years 1936-1945 never happened so that makes sense. This episode also drove home the importance of the Prime Directive. In the recent movies the Prime Directive has more or less turned into the Prime If It’s At All Convenient but if I start off on that this blog will go another 10,000 words.
Dave
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