A Brief Guide to Star Trek

computers or artificial intelligences that set out to dominate organic life. Among those in the first season are ‘The Return of the Archons’, which sees the descendants of Starfleet officers freed from the control of a supercomputer, and ‘A Taste of Armageddon’, in which two warring cultures abide by a computer’s assessment of virtual casualties and then calmly kill their own people. In both, Kirk destroys the computer at the heart of the respective cultures, and in the process tries to teach the now freed peoples to think for themselves. It was a clear reflection of thinking promoting individuality in the 1960s, while ‘A Taste of Armageddon’ also functioned as an allegory for the futile nature of war, particularly the ongoing controversial conflict in Vietnam at that time.
    In ‘The Changeling’, early in the second season, the
Enterprise
encounters an artificial intelligence known as Nomad, a long-lost Earth probe, damaged during its long voyage and reconstituted by superior machine intelligences. Its altered programming now has Nomad seeking out life in order to exterminate it, a mission only put on hold as the machine believes Kirk to be its creator. Kirk demolishes the machine’s claim to infallibility by adopting the risky strategy of revealing he is not Jackson Roykirk, creator of the Earth Nomad probe, and so the machine is wrong. Naturally, this breakdown in logic causes Nomad to self-destruct.
    Other episodes from
The Original Series
dealing with the theme include ‘The Doomsday Machine’, about a relentless weapon that destroys all before it (a space-based variation of
Moby Dick
, essentially), while ‘The Apple’ features yet another world run by a computer intelligence that is eventually destroyed by Kirk. ‘The Ultimate Computer’ sees an artificial intelligenceinstalled on the
Enterprise
to demonstrate that a computer can run the ship better than its human crew. In the course of the episode, Kirk begins to despair that he is no longer needed, until the computer (which is augmented by creator Daystrom’s disturbed mental patterns) acts illogically and begins destroying other starships. It’s another opportunity for Kirk to talk a computer to death – in Roddenberry’s
Star Trek
, the organic always overcomes the artificial and mechanical.
    The appearance of malevolent computers or artificial intelligence in
Star Trek
episodes are often used to highlight the character of Spock: while his logic often causes him to agree with a computer’s processing, he’s always on the side of Kirk in prioritising organic life and intelligence over the artificial. In ‘The Ultimate Computer’, Spock goes so far as to say, ‘Computers make excellent and efficient servants, but I have no wish to serve under them.’ In ‘The Apple’, he can see the virtue in the computer-controlled primitive (and stagnant) society, much to Dr McCoy’s disgust.
    Another favourite topic of many episodes in
The Original Series
was superpowered or God-like beings. While Gene Roddenberry professed humanist beliefs and was disdainful of organised religion, he seemed fascinated by the concept of God and this often arose in
Star Trek
stories. In a letter to a cousin in 1984, Roddenberry wrote: ‘The real villain is religion – at least, religion as generally practised by people who somehow become sure that they and only they know the “real” answer. How few humans there are that seem to realise that killing, much less hating, their fellow humans in the name of their “god” is the ultimate kind of perversion.’
    From the second pilot, ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’, through a handful of first season episodes – ‘Charlie X’, ‘The Squire of Gothos’, ‘The Return of the Archons’ and ‘Space Seed’ prime among them – the theme occurs repeatedly. Often, the powers that these beings demonstrate come with a degree of immaturity. The Squire of Gothos himself is a child, and Balok in ‘The Corbomite Maneuver’ is child-like’ (a concept wellspoofed in the
Futurama
episode ‘Where No Fan Has Gone Before’). Even the Greek ‘god’ Apollo in ‘Who Mourns for Adonais?’ seems out of his depth when he attempts to make the
Enterprise
crew worship him, just as the humans of old did. He has to be persuaded by Kirk that his time has passed and he must move on to the spiritual plane, like his contemporaries did before him.
    ‘Space Seed’ presents the most obvious example of a superhuman in