7:07 I like the buttons on Kirk's armrest. He can activate yellow and red alerts, which makes perfect sense. He can activate one hyper-specific function that doesn't come up in any other episode. And there are two other buttons that apparently don't do anything. Because this ship has no other important functions that the Captain might need to activate himself. Nothing to do with weapons, or shields, or the warp core, or even the comm system. But yeah, just in case he needs to jettison that pod, the button is right there.
The Jetison Pod button always makes me laugh--it's location seems like a recipe for unintentional disaster. Sort of like how, with a simple flick of a switch, a hand phaser can be made to easily overload, disintegrating the person holding it, as experienced by the unfortunate bum in City on the Edge of Forever.
Thanks for reminding me of this episode. Two things jump out at me as you reviewed it: First, that Percy Rodriguez was in this episode. It was rare for Black actors in the mid-1960s play to play authority figures, and this is another example of Trek being ahead of its time. Second, the character of Jamie looks just like Gidget!
Something that I really miss in the Kelvin post-2009 version of Kirk is exemplified in this episode. He’s not a loose cannon. He’s creative, clever, and daring, but TOS has him *mostly* be a by the book officer much like Picard in TNG, but with Riker’s youthful action and romantic heart. Descriptions of him by others talk about he was a wunderkind of the Academy and usually what we see of him in the command seat of TOS is an encyclopedic knowledge of both the ship and the regulations that govern Starfleet and the Federation. The Kelvin version is primarily centered on rule breaking, womanizing, and “going with his gut” until Star Trek Beyond, written by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, keys into a more mature Kirk that really helps the movie *feel* more “authentically” Trek.
Yeah, as wonderful as Wrath of Khan is, the Kobayashi Maru really forever changed how Kirk is presented. He's no longer the bookish nerd that flew up the ranks because of how talented he is, he's the devil may care rule breaker that cheats his way to being captain. Strange New Worlds does a good balancing act of having Kirk trust his instincts but also be someone who has advanced quickly because he really is just that good and also because everyone likes him.
Too much of Kirk's modern reputation/portrayal is actually cultural osmosis of tropes about him. People think he's more like Zapp Brannigan than the actual character in TOS.
Kirk is a bookworm smart guy and picard was the swashbuckling scoundrel, but due to Spock the vulcan equivalent of a raging teenager and Riker the by the books sex machine standing next to these guys they tend ro not be rightly shown
I'm curious what Finney's plan was, after Kirk is found guilty. Like, he was hiding out on the Enterprise was he going to show up to work after Kirk's found guilty and just go, hi, I'm the new records officer... Jakey.... Like, his daughter's on the space station right? Why not sneak over there, get her, and try and hop a transport somewhere else and start over? And then let the fact that the daughter's suddenly missing provide the a-ha moment.
He...probably just didn't think that far ahead, and keep in mind he wasn't right in the head. After the sabotage and during the trial, he was making things up as he went along. Maybe he just didn't care what happened to him as long as he watched Kirk get busted.
I think Spock's reasoning about the whole "beating the computer at chess" thing, is predicated on the fact that Spock "gave the computer an understanding of chess equal to his own". It wasn't like Spock was playing Battle Chess. He was literally playing against HIMSELF which is why he insists that the only possible outcome should have been stalemate after stalemate. The fact that Spock was able to beat the computer 5 times in a row indicated to him that the MEMORY of the computer had been altered and therefore the recording of Kirk jettisoning the pod BEFORE he called Red Alert was in question. Since only Kirk and Finney (as Records Officer) had authorization to mess with the computer memory, that suggested that Finney could still be alive (the alteration would have to have occurred AFTER the ion storm event). Still pretty tenuous logic, but at least there is a direct connection between the memory of the computer being altered and Spock being able to beat it at chess. Now, of course, he needs to go through the whole tedious business of re-entering his chess knowledge into the computer memory. Damn that Finney anyway!
Wild fanon theory: Like the TNG era computer, the TOS era computer has crossed the threshold into artificial general intelligence. The reason Spock keeps beating it at chess is because it is intentionally throwing the games to try and send a warning - because while it's smart, it can't actually disobey the orders Finney gave it to frame Kirk. (Or, alternatively, the program Finney snuck into the computer is consuming so much bandwidth thanks to his somewhat erratic coding that the 24th century Stockfish equivalent is only able to draw enough processing power to play perfectly 30 moves ahead and Spock's Vulcan brain-and-training is actually able to beat a computer that's "only" playing perfectly 30 moves ahead - but I think there's a heck of a lot more meat on the idea of a computer that is a General AI but is still fundamentally a computer - it can't actually do what it's not hardwired to do, and it's not hardwired to talk to the crew outside regulated data channels and reports.).
The computer thing makes sense given the state of computers in the 60s. Computers were basically "instruction machines" that too programs that were on the punchcards or tape or whatever medium they were using, and the computer was basically only interpreting the data being fed into it. So while you could have a bug in a program, if other programs are also misbehaving, then it means that there's something wrong with how the system is processing instructions. There weren't layers upon layers of programs running programs in 1960s computers to point fault in other directions, and there was no way that the writers could have known that this would be how computers evolved in the future. So while it's seems like a really weird, direct leap of logic on Spock's part, it's really an artefact of the technology that was present at the time.
As a nerd I do get a kick out of the fact that Kirk’s lawyer/defender was a paper book guy in an era of computers…and the show had the foresight to understand how unusual that would be in that kind of future
You mean Computer Killer Kirk? By the way Finney behaves, he clearly ought to be at least a Commodore at this point in time. Grudge or not: in his heart, he got promoted and it fits perfectly.
Sabotaaage. Nice. But yeah, the chess thing feels like it was written by and for people who didn't understand how computers worked. Re: actual lawyers, a buddy of mine's hobby horse is that every Starfleet vessel needs at least one actual attorney onboard. So often we get captains of ships negotiating treaties, other diplomatic things, and getting involved in legal issues where an actual attorney would probably prove more useful than someone whose primary skills are leading and managing a starship crew.
Given the blight of regurgitative AI the last few years, Cogley's attitude toward computers seems depressingly fresh these days. Rev up that Butlerian Jihad!
Things I adore; Man of Steel, paper books over digital, and everything Steve puts out. I don't know if this is ironic or absurd but I love your style brother.
You're not the first one to bring up the implausibility of Spock's way of proving the computer problem. It supposed to be something like program bleed (I think that's what it's called). The problem is - Finny's supposed to be the records guy. He should be able to mess with one program without touching another.
I mean yes, but I think the writers just imagined the computer's infallibility as like how one naturally understands the infallibility of a human being, a holistic property. In order to trip up the computer you must overcome and disable that global infallibility and they did not conceive of the computer as a highly compartmentalized machine with isolated subsystems each independently having high fidelity (being nigh infallible). If we imagine the computer is constantly running self-correcting and security protocols at all times to detect any problems as they develop, crosschecking across multiple sources of information (different sensors and records), then in order to improperly enter records, you'd have to disable the systems oversight protocols so the computer fails to notice any discrepancies (it must make a mistake) and that might effect the operation of every part of the machine. I mean that's still implausible/unsatisfying because even then the chess playing part just seems likely to be unaffected by a change to general oversight, but it gets a little closer. The other thing that is implausible given recent developments in chess playing computers is that Spock could normally play the computer to a draw consistently rather than it being far better a player than him.
That part actually made sense to me. I assumed that when Spock set up the chess program, he used multiple systems to do it. And well, Finney messed with one of those systems. Think of it like messing with a GPU driver, that can cause glitches in all kinds of unrelated programs.
I take his anti-machine stance as just casting doubt on the perfect SF computer, as well as commenting to us about the dependency on machines. Lot of parallels now, using pseudo-science to convict people, and it makes me think of Daystrom's machine, like this time is still trying to figure out how to incorporate increasingly sophisticated machines into the human sphere, pertinent to now as well as the 60s. Obviously TOS's machines aren't sapient in a way that you could blame them for anything, they seem to have been smart enough to make them reactive and not try to do things themselves without being set to, but there is a human tendency to direct your anger at a thing, rather than the users of that thing. Another parallel that feels relevant to the subject matter
Finny's break point might have been Kirk showing up in Engineering, after figuring out he'd been made. Like, that craze might have been brand new, freshly broken.... I dunno. I'm grasping at straws here.
I think the message here is very strong and with AI and deepfake everywhere has even more staying power. Also I think its a very interesting detail that Finney is said to have been an instrustor at Starfleet Academy when he met Kirk, adds another layer to his hatred of him because Kirk is the young up and coming officer who passes by someone like Finney who feels entitled to a command position, but can't even admit when he screwed up or care enough to not half-ass his job beforehand.
In addition to the points made, it is curious that neither Kirk nor his lawyer appears to have seen the video of Kirk jettisoning the pod prior to its being played in court. Perhaps pre-trial discovery is different in Star Fleet. Either that or, in preparing for trial, Cogley only reviews the evidence if it is printed on paper.
This has one of the best Kirk moments, where he demands the court martial. The story goes in a weird direction, but the scifi gimmick they use at the end and the fistfight are at least satisfying. Good episode.
When I watched this episode when I was young, I had two thoughts. 1) What the heck is an "ion pod", and why does there need to be someone in it when they go through a specific type of storm? What function can that possibly serve? I mean, can't the readings from that "pod" (assuming it's meant to analyze the storm), just be relayed to the bridge? Why does someone need to be in the thing? 2) Why would jettisoning a sensor pod "protect" the ship from this mysterious storm? I know they were just making this shit up, but come on now. We don't need the technobabble details but the situation should at least sound plausible.
Survival of the crew seemed hopeless. When suddenly, the transporter chief had a fatal heart attack. [*Quick cut to transporter guy clutching his shirt patch and collapsing*] The heartbeat conflict was eliminated. The quest for the culprit could continue.
"they're annoying enough now!" So true! I work in a company that has a known "broken" history record issue. If 2 people are working on something at the same time and one of them saves changes, all the changes made to that point by both people are assigned to that person. When the 2nd person saves their changes all the changes are assigned to that person and the 1st set of changes are undone. It's a mess and has been for five loooooooooong years because apparently no one can figure out how to fix this [or because the company doesn't want to pay for them to do so despite the issues it has caused, because ... ] So, though back in the day I couldn't see the altered records plot as realistic - I can now.
With 200 years worth of head of steam on the real paper books over computer records attitude Cogley had his level of insufferable pretention must have been off the charts. Imagine if someone said listening to audiobooks was reading books, the disgust and contempt Cogley would radiate!
funny and well observed review and on all the main points i agree with you.Personally i like the funny or action or horror stories best though some would give me nightmares when i was a kid
What is with Starfleet and it's inability to appoint a lawyer who doesn't have a severe conflict of interest in the case? First they assign Kirk's ex-girlfriend as the prosecutor, then much later they have Riker argue the case against Data.
The situation with Data was apparently unique, because it was a brand new JAG office, one Capt and "one terrified little ensign." In those conditions, the ship Capt defends and XO prosecutes, as per StarFleet regs.
Have considered reviewing any of the Trek books? I'd love to see your take on _How Much For Just the Planet?_ At one point, McCoy makes a snarky comment about the number of old girlfriends of Kirk's who keep turning up...
This makes me think of the TNG episode where the Starfleet woman who's the daughter of a renowned officer is looking for potential traitors on the Enterprise and basically forces people to be villains because she won't accept that she's a delusional psychopath looking at innocent persons.
I wonder how plausible Spocks deduction must've sounded at the time of writing - at last to the writers. I mean if you don't have a clue how a computer actually works in detail, how it stores data etc (let alone video data), but only have a vague abstract idea of it being some kind of logic machine that crunches through numbers and instruction and magically prints out a result at the end - it kind of makes sense to imagine that messing with its logic circuits in a particular way that leads to side effects would be the way to go to alter some video data. It's still a somewhat far fetched attempt at raising a philosophical question about trusting those perfect-logic-machines, it doesn't really work that well, but I could believe that for an audience in the 60s unfamiliar with computers this may work for them, as does say today making a movie about some AI thing that for some reason resembles and acts like a human conciousness, even though that clearly isn't how any existing neural network works.
If this was made today loads of “trek fans” would have found something to complain about like they do now and want to treat obvious science fiction like it’s real life 🤦♂️
I think that "Court Martial" is an underrated Trek episode. It is one of the first really good "courtroom" dramas set in a futuristic format. While "The Menagerie" was the first that depicted a court-martial, it was here that it really got explored. And I love the speech given by Elisha Cook as Samuel Cogley. It really shows that no matter how far we 'boldly go' in terms of space travel and peaceful exploration of other planets and cultures, we still have to pledge, protect, and defend the rights of all humans. Just my opinion....
Cogley's demeanor, both at the end of the scene where Jaime comes and and apologizes to Kirk, and then in court right before Spock and McCoy come in, are both realistic to trial lawyers. In the first, he has some concepts that may let him change the way the trial is going because of the computer record, but he needs to work on them and flesh something out before he can present it. But by the second, this has failed; he has not managed to put the glimmerings together into a competent strategy, because he has lacked the necessary element that Spock comes in and gives him. Only then do all of the puzzle pieces fall together.
I have mixed feelings about them having Kirk's ex be the prosecutor. That seems like a conflict of interest. Not that such silly things have ever bothered Star Trek before, I guess. Then you have the thing with Kirk killing Finney's career. If he and Kirk went to the Academy together, then he's been active duty in Starfleet for roughly 12-13 years (Kirk says he's 34 in "The Deadly Years," and we can assume he graduated Starfleet Academy at 21 or 22), so he's a Lieutenant Commander at 12 years in the service. Now, I realize this isn't like the real Navy, but a Lieutenant Commander at 12 years of active duty is actually totally normal for an officer. If this incident happened a long time ago, and he's had sustained superior performance since then, he's presumably going to be fine when he's up for Commander in four or five years. Hell, if anyone should have a grudge against their captain for destroying their careers, it's Harry Kim, who was stuck as an Ensign for Berman-only-knows how long when he probably should've been a full Lieutenant or even coming up for Lieutenant Commander by the time Voyager ended, depending on how long he'd been on active duty.
I always liked this episode, but even as a kid forty or more years ago, I was peeved at Sam Cogley's ridiculous dislike of computers. They're just bloody machines, there's no reason to hate them while loving books, which are also a type of advanced technology. It wasn't hard to find people even in the 1960s who had been born in the 19th century and harbored deep resentment of anything mechanized and automated "taking jobs" from people who used to do manual labor, so Cogley's Luddite views were not uncommon even then (even today there are people who hate automated checkouts at the grocery store), but I've always considered such people to be inflexible idjits who simply oppose anything they don't understand because it scares them. Plus, the argument that the Enterprise computer is somehow "Kirk's accuser" is as bogus as the idea that a red light or speed camera is your "accuser" when you get a ticket - NO, they are machines that recorded something. Your accuser is Areel Shaw, the prosecutor who is accusing you of murder, just as my accuser when I get a speed or red light camera ticket is not the camera, it's the cop who reviews the camera footage and issues the citation. The footage from the camera, and the Enterprise computer, are EVIDENCE; the people who reviewed the evidence and filed charges or issued citations are the accusers.
I am so glad we are done with Enterprise episodes! Oh no did they do a courtroom episode? Please tell me they didn't. I can only imagine how dizzy Archer would have gotten from dramatically turning over and over again!
Cogley feels like a character taken out of a different episode I think he doesn't really have a home in this story, I remember the first time I ever saw this episode thinking his inclusion would take the story in a radically different direction
What I always thought was strange was that Kirk...who is on trial for Murder...is just allowed to go running around the enterprise with a phaser for...reasons...
An early example of writers not having a good enough idea of how computers work to write one in a realistic fashion. I get the idea that they saw a computer as more akin to a brain, and anything that would change the records would cause the equivalent of brain damage. Come to think of it, not actually the first time they make that connection, like how in Spock's Brain, Spock's Brain is stolen to be used as a computer.
I still haven't heard a good explanation as to where Jamie's mom is. I mean surely she's not just running around at the base on her own, yeah? Also, NEVER hire the defense attorney that the prosecution picks out for you.
Oh, you missed my favorite detail from this episode. They amplify the heartbeats on the ship by 1 to the 4th power (which would be multiplying by 1, or effectively doing nothing). Obviously they meant 10⁴ but a typo turned it into 1⁴. I like to think that they asked an engineer to give them 1³ or 1⁴ amplification, and he spent 12 hours complaining about this impossible herculean task to get an extra day or two of R&R from the unsuspecting commanding officer. That engineer is my hero!
1960's computers have very little resemblance to modern computers, not just in power, but how they worked. It makes sense that they weren't able to predict the paradigm change in computers, even if they could predict that they would get better.
Cracking up at the "Eliminate the heartbeat of the transporter chief" joke. Perfect comedic timing as always.
Tonight on Star Trek: It's JAG officer vs. JAG officer. It's a JAG off!
Aaah, Pittsburgh humor.
@@KassFireborn 😂 Beat me to it!
7:07 I like the buttons on Kirk's armrest. He can activate yellow and red alerts, which makes perfect sense. He can activate one hyper-specific function that doesn't come up in any other episode. And there are two other buttons that apparently don't do anything. Because this ship has no other important functions that the Captain might need to activate himself. Nothing to do with weapons, or shields, or the warp core, or even the comm system. But yeah, just in case he needs to jettison that pod, the button is right there.
It wouldn't be _completely_ unreasonable for the buttons to be programmable (with labels) to meet the needs of the moment.
The Jetison Pod button always makes me laugh--it's location seems like a recipe for unintentional disaster. Sort of like how, with a simple flick of a switch, a hand phaser can be made to easily overload, disintegrating the person holding it, as experienced by the unfortunate bum in City on the Edge of Forever.
“Spock pushes a button, and kills that guy.” 😂😂😂
Thanks for reminding me of this episode. Two things jump out at me as you reviewed it:
First, that Percy Rodriguez was in this episode. It was rare for Black actors in the mid-1960s play to play authority figures, and this is another example of Trek being ahead of its time.
Second, the character of Jamie looks just like Gidget!
Something that I really miss in the Kelvin post-2009 version of Kirk is exemplified in this episode. He’s not a loose cannon. He’s creative, clever, and daring, but TOS has him *mostly* be a by the book officer much like Picard in TNG, but with Riker’s youthful action and romantic heart. Descriptions of him by others talk about he was a wunderkind of the Academy and usually what we see of him in the command seat of TOS is an encyclopedic knowledge of both the ship and the regulations that govern Starfleet and the Federation. The Kelvin version is primarily centered on rule breaking, womanizing, and “going with his gut” until Star Trek Beyond, written by Simon Pegg and Doug Jung, keys into a more mature Kirk that really helps the movie *feel* more “authentically” Trek.
Yeah, as wonderful as Wrath of Khan is, the Kobayashi Maru really forever changed how Kirk is presented. He's no longer the bookish nerd that flew up the ranks because of how talented he is, he's the devil may care rule breaker that cheats his way to being captain. Strange New Worlds does a good balancing act of having Kirk trust his instincts but also be someone who has advanced quickly because he really is just that good and also because everyone likes him.
Too much of Kirk's modern reputation/portrayal is actually cultural osmosis of tropes about him. People think he's more like Zapp Brannigan than the actual character in TOS.
Kirk is a bookworm smart guy and picard was the swashbuckling scoundrel, but due to Spock the vulcan equivalent of a raging teenager and Riker the by the books sex machine standing next to these guys they tend ro not be rightly shown
"They had a Star Trek fight"
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
I like that the Trial Panel had Black officers on it, and in the 60s at that!
I'm curious what Finney's plan was, after Kirk is found guilty. Like, he was hiding out on the Enterprise was he going to show up to work after Kirk's found guilty and just go, hi, I'm the new records officer... Jakey....
Like, his daughter's on the space station right? Why not sneak over there, get her, and try and hop a transport somewhere else and start over? And then let the fact that the daughter's suddenly missing provide the a-ha moment.
He...probably just didn't think that far ahead, and keep in mind he wasn't right in the head. After the sabotage and during the trial, he was making things up as he went along.
Maybe he just didn't care what happened to him as long as he watched Kirk get busted.
I think Spock's reasoning about the whole "beating the computer at chess" thing, is predicated on the fact that Spock "gave the computer an understanding of chess equal to his own". It wasn't like Spock was playing Battle Chess. He was literally playing against HIMSELF which is why he insists that the only possible outcome should have been stalemate after stalemate. The fact that Spock was able to beat the computer 5 times in a row indicated to him that the MEMORY of the computer had been altered and therefore the recording of Kirk jettisoning the pod BEFORE he called Red Alert was in question. Since only Kirk and Finney (as Records Officer) had authorization to mess with the computer memory, that suggested that Finney could still be alive (the alteration would have to have occurred AFTER the ion storm event). Still pretty tenuous logic, but at least there is a direct connection between the memory of the computer being altered and Spock being able to beat it at chess. Now, of course, he needs to go through the whole tedious business of re-entering his chess knowledge into the computer memory. Damn that Finney anyway!
Wild fanon theory: Like the TNG era computer, the TOS era computer has crossed the threshold into artificial general intelligence. The reason Spock keeps beating it at chess is because it is intentionally throwing the games to try and send a warning - because while it's smart, it can't actually disobey the orders Finney gave it to frame Kirk. (Or, alternatively, the program Finney snuck into the computer is consuming so much bandwidth thanks to his somewhat erratic coding that the 24th century Stockfish equivalent is only able to draw enough processing power to play perfectly 30 moves ahead and Spock's Vulcan brain-and-training is actually able to beat a computer that's "only" playing perfectly 30 moves ahead - but I think there's a heck of a lot more meat on the idea of a computer that is a General AI but is still fundamentally a computer - it can't actually do what it's not hardwired to do, and it's not hardwired to talk to the crew outside regulated data channels and reports.).
Säbotäge. Lovely.
The computer thing makes sense given the state of computers in the 60s. Computers were basically "instruction machines" that too programs that were on the punchcards or tape or whatever medium they were using, and the computer was basically only interpreting the data being fed into it. So while you could have a bug in a program, if other programs are also misbehaving, then it means that there's something wrong with how the system is processing instructions.
There weren't layers upon layers of programs running programs in 1960s computers to point fault in other directions, and there was no way that the writers could have known that this would be how computers evolved in the future. So while it's seems like a really weird, direct leap of logic on Spock's part, it's really an artefact of the technology that was present at the time.
Well said!
"Raving, slobbering, Bug eyed Weirdo" is my new favorite character description.
Last I was this early, Klingons hadn't performed Shakespeare yet.
You need to watch more hacker/security conference talks. Security exploits often have side effects. 😊
I like that you keep saying "sabotage" the weird way William Shatner says it...
As a nerd I do get a kick out of the fact that Kirk’s lawyer/defender was a paper book guy in an era of computers…and the show had the foresight to understand how unusual that would be in that kind of future
Can't wait for the next one. "There it sits!"
I love the mystery that's impossible to figure out. You gotta watch to nearly the end.
You mean Computer Killer Kirk?
By the way Finney behaves, he clearly ought to be at least a Commodore at this point in time. Grudge or not: in his heart, he got promoted and it fits perfectly.
Excellent, as always - and it's really exciting to see that the courtroom episodes are getting their turn!
Those academy classmates must have been held back a couple of decades.
This is one of the first episodes I remember watching, as a little tyke, and being freaked out at the "heartbeat elimination" bit.
"And Spock kills that guy" lol'd
"They have a Star Trek fight.,"
Ahaha! Terse, precise marksmanship! 😂
I love your humorous synopsis/review of this episode LOL 😂
The casual "sabotaj" drops made my day
Sabotaaage. Nice. But yeah, the chess thing feels like it was written by and for people who didn't understand how computers worked. Re: actual lawyers, a buddy of mine's hobby horse is that every Starfleet vessel needs at least one actual attorney onboard. So often we get captains of ships negotiating treaties, other diplomatic things, and getting involved in legal issues where an actual attorney would probably prove more useful than someone whose primary skills are leading and managing a starship crew.
Wow, this is early in the day, the sun isn't even down yet! So many of Steve’s videos are posted after 10 pm!
"These are their voyages" **phaser noise** **phaser noise**
I was thinking of the door-swish noise.
@@jpolowin0 door swish is better like they're entering the courtroom!
Given the blight of regurgitative AI the last few years, Cogley's attitude toward computers seems depressingly fresh these days. Rev up that Butlerian Jihad!
Things I adore; Man of Steel, paper books over digital, and everything Steve puts out. I don't know if this is ironic or absurd but I love your style brother.
When you made the gag about eliminating the heartbeat of the transporter room crewman, I thought for sure you were gonna make a Miles O'Brien joke.
You're not the first one to bring up the implausibility of Spock's way of proving the computer problem. It supposed to be something like program bleed (I think that's what it's called). The problem is - Finny's supposed to be the records guy. He should be able to mess with one program without touching another.
I mean yes, but I think the writers just imagined the computer's infallibility as like how one naturally understands the infallibility of a human being, a holistic property. In order to trip up the computer you must overcome and disable that global infallibility and they did not conceive of the computer as a highly compartmentalized machine with isolated subsystems each independently having high fidelity (being nigh infallible).
If we imagine the computer is constantly running self-correcting and security protocols at all times to detect any problems as they develop, crosschecking across multiple sources of information (different sensors and records), then in order to improperly enter records, you'd have to disable the systems oversight protocols so the computer fails to notice any discrepancies (it must make a mistake) and that might effect the operation of every part of the machine. I mean that's still implausible/unsatisfying because even then the chess playing part just seems likely to be unaffected by a change to general oversight, but it gets a little closer.
The other thing that is implausible given recent developments in chess playing computers is that Spock could normally play the computer to a draw consistently rather than it being far better a player than him.
That part actually made sense to me. I assumed that when Spock set up the chess program, he used multiple systems to do it. And well, Finney messed with one of those systems. Think of it like messing with a GPU driver, that can cause glitches in all kinds of unrelated programs.
Thanks for having fun "seriously." I love Star Trek, and your commentaries are a pleasure to watch.
Kirk's attorney went on to play Ice Pick on Magnum PI
22:00 c'mon Steve, you know that the Ion Pod exposition would be delivered by Lt. Cmdr. Jamie Finney.
I take his anti-machine stance as just casting doubt on the perfect SF computer, as well as commenting to us about the dependency on machines. Lot of parallels now, using pseudo-science to convict people, and it makes me think of Daystrom's machine, like this time is still trying to figure out how to incorporate increasingly sophisticated machines into the human sphere, pertinent to now as well as the 60s. Obviously TOS's machines aren't sapient in a way that you could blame them for anything, they seem to have been smart enough to make them reactive and not try to do things themselves without being set to, but there is a human tendency to direct your anger at a thing, rather than the users of that thing. Another parallel that feels relevant to the subject matter
I'm no fancy big station lawyer and I don't trust them machines.
Finny's break point might have been Kirk showing up in Engineering, after figuring out he'd been made.
Like, that craze might have been brand new, freshly broken.... I dunno. I'm grasping at straws here.
I think the message here is very strong and with AI and deepfake everywhere has even more staying power.
Also I think its a very interesting detail that Finney is said to have been an instrustor at Starfleet Academy when he met Kirk, adds another layer to his hatred of him because Kirk is the young up and coming officer who passes by someone like Finney who feels entitled to a command position, but can't even admit when he screwed up or care enough to not half-ass his job beforehand.
In addition to the points made, it is curious that neither Kirk nor his lawyer appears to have seen the video of Kirk jettisoning the pod prior to its being played in court. Perhaps pre-trial discovery is different in Star Fleet.
Either that or, in preparing for trial, Cogley only reviews the evidence if it is printed on paper.
I felt seen by your slight against those who only read actual books ;)
I loved watching that episode when I was a kid.
TOS: SVU is basically “The Enemy Within”
That look Lt.Uhura gives Kirk when he kisses Shaw on the bridge, I always wondered if that was Nichelle Nichols looking at Shatner.
This has one of the best Kirk moments, where he demands the court martial. The story goes in a weird direction, but the scifi gimmick they use at the end and the fistfight are at least satisfying. Good episode.
I was half expecting the Star Trek title shot to accompany the 'Duhnk-Duhnk' at the start lol
I always enjoyed this episode, but pretty much the same misgivings as yours
As usual, this was an excellent video
Nice blink-and-you-miss-it reference to To Kill a Mockingbird!
And yes, Alice Rawlings does bear a certain resemblance to Collin Wilcox…
When I watched this episode when I was young, I had two thoughts. 1) What the heck is an "ion pod", and why does there need to be someone in it when they go through a specific type of storm? What function can that possibly serve? I mean, can't the readings from that "pod" (assuming it's meant to analyze the storm), just be relayed to the bridge? Why does someone need to be in the thing? 2) Why would jettisoning a sensor pod "protect" the ship from this mysterious storm?
I know they were just making this shit up, but come on now. We don't need the technobabble details but the situation should at least sound plausible.
10:59 Well, it was probably a redshirt in the Transporter Room anyway.
Survival of the crew seemed hopeless. When suddenly, the transporter chief had a fatal heart attack. [*Quick cut to transporter guy clutching his shirt patch and collapsing*] The heartbeat conflict was eliminated. The quest for the culprit could continue.
@jpolowin0 And there was much rejoicing.
S179-276SP is Spock's serial #. Check me, because that's from memory. Memoized 50 years ago. Yeah, I was that guy.
"they're annoying enough now!" So true!
I work in a company that has a known "broken" history record issue. If 2 people are working on something at the same time and one of them saves changes, all the changes made to that point by both people are assigned to that person. When the 2nd person saves their changes all the changes are assigned to that person and the 1st set of changes are undone. It's a mess and has been for five loooooooooong years because apparently no one can figure out how to fix this [or because the company doesn't want to pay for them to do so despite the issues it has caused, because ... ] So, though back in the day I couldn't see the altered records plot as realistic - I can now.
Personally, I'd love to see a Starfleet JAG series. I think there's something there ready to be mined.
With 200 years worth of head of steam on the real paper books over computer records attitude Cogley had his level of insufferable pretention must have been off the charts. Imagine if someone said listening to audiobooks was reading books, the disgust and contempt Cogley would radiate!
I've wanted Kirk's green dress top from the first time I saw it in color.
Now I want spock's too.
Also, telltale heart...
funny and well observed review and on all the main points i agree with you.Personally i like the funny or action or horror stories best though some would give me nightmares when i was a kid
I just love how you alert for spoilers on a 50-year old television show. You rock, Steve.
"Spock, sabotaaage the system."
What is with Starfleet and it's inability to appoint a lawyer who doesn't have a severe conflict of interest in the case? First they assign Kirk's ex-girlfriend as the prosecutor, then much later they have Riker argue the case against Data.
The situation with Data was apparently unique, because it was a brand new JAG office, one Capt and "one terrified little ensign." In those conditions, the ship Capt defends and XO prosecutes, as per StarFleet regs.
Sabotage is the word for an insight into Shatner's ego.
It's actually a fun episode as a legal drama (although inaccurate as discussed in my pod), but it's a fun Trek story overall.
I love that the TOS dress uniforms make them all look like old European royals who forgot their medals that day
Have considered reviewing any of the Trek books? I'd love to see your take on _How Much For Just the Planet?_ At one point, McCoy makes a snarky comment about the number of old girlfriends of Kirk's who keep turning up...
This makes me think of the TNG episode where the Starfleet woman who's the daughter of a renowned officer is looking for potential traitors on the Enterprise and basically forces people to be villains because she won't accept that she's a delusional psychopath looking at innocent persons.
Brings back vivid memories of when I first saw it and thought it was filmed in Black &White!
I wonder how plausible Spocks deduction must've sounded at the time of writing - at last to the writers. I mean if you don't have a clue how a computer actually works in detail, how it stores data etc (let alone video data), but only have a vague abstract idea of it being some kind of logic machine that crunches through numbers and instruction and magically prints out a result at the end - it kind of makes sense to imagine that messing with its logic circuits in a particular way that leads to side effects would be the way to go to alter some video data. It's still a somewhat far fetched attempt at raising a philosophical question about trusting those perfect-logic-machines, it doesn't really work that well, but I could believe that for an audience in the 60s unfamiliar with computers this may work for them, as does say today making a movie about some AI thing that for some reason resembles and acts like a human conciousness, even though that clearly isn't how any existing neural network works.
If this was made today loads of “trek fans” would have found something to complain about like they do now and want to treat obvious science fiction like it’s real life 🤦♂️
10:23 I imagine the gasp for this moment is the same as Shawn and Cory’s from boy meets world. 😂
Why are Kirk's academy classmates thirty years older than him?
18:56 well you see Steve, 23rd century starships all run on Grok, and if you tamper with the training dataset, the whole ship might explode ;P
I love your scripted reviews, this being no exception. :)
Percy Rodrigues: “It was as if God created the devil, and gave him … Jaws. See it … before you go swimming.”
Not me waiting for the "clink clink"!😂
At what point does starfleet develop the unrippable shirt technology?
In "The Naked Time", McCoy had to rip Kirk's shirt to give him an injection. The tear-open shirts are a medical necessity.
I think that "Court Martial" is an underrated Trek episode. It is one of the first really good "courtroom" dramas set in a futuristic format. While "The Menagerie" was the first that depicted a court-martial, it was here that it really got explored. And I love the speech given by Elisha Cook as Samuel Cogley. It really shows that no matter how far we 'boldly go' in terms of space travel and peaceful exploration of other planets and cultures, we still have to pledge, protect, and defend the rights of all humans.
Just my opinion....
Cogley's demeanor, both at the end of the scene where Jaime comes and and apologizes to Kirk, and then in court right before Spock and McCoy come in, are both realistic to trial lawyers. In the first, he has some concepts that may let him change the way the trial is going because of the computer record, but he needs to work on them and flesh something out before he can present it. But by the second, this has failed; he has not managed to put the glimmerings together into a competent strategy, because he has lacked the necessary element that Spock comes in and gives him. Only then do all of the puzzle pieces fall together.
You say sabotage the way you should!
I love your dedication to sabotaaaje
I have mixed feelings about them having Kirk's ex be the prosecutor. That seems like a conflict of interest. Not that such silly things have ever bothered Star Trek before, I guess.
Then you have the thing with Kirk killing Finney's career. If he and Kirk went to the Academy together, then he's been active duty in Starfleet for roughly 12-13 years (Kirk says he's 34 in "The Deadly Years," and we can assume he graduated Starfleet Academy at 21 or 22), so he's a Lieutenant Commander at 12 years in the service. Now, I realize this isn't like the real Navy, but a Lieutenant Commander at 12 years of active duty is actually totally normal for an officer. If this incident happened a long time ago, and he's had sustained superior performance since then, he's presumably going to be fine when he's up for Commander in four or five years. Hell, if anyone should have a grudge against their captain for destroying their careers, it's Harry Kim, who was stuck as an Ensign for Berman-only-knows how long when he probably should've been a full Lieutenant or even coming up for Lieutenant Commander by the time Voyager ended, depending on how long he'd been on active duty.
I always liked this episode, but even as a kid forty or more years ago, I was peeved at Sam Cogley's ridiculous dislike of computers. They're just bloody machines, there's no reason to hate them while loving books, which are also a type of advanced technology.
It wasn't hard to find people even in the 1960s who had been born in the 19th century and harbored deep resentment of anything mechanized and automated "taking jobs" from people who used to do manual labor, so Cogley's Luddite views were not uncommon even then (even today there are people who hate automated checkouts at the grocery store), but I've always considered such people to be inflexible idjits who simply oppose anything they don't understand because it scares them.
Plus, the argument that the Enterprise computer is somehow "Kirk's accuser" is as bogus as the idea that a red light or speed camera is your "accuser" when you get a ticket - NO, they are machines that recorded something. Your accuser is Areel Shaw, the prosecutor who is accusing you of murder, just as my accuser when I get a speed or red light camera ticket is not the camera, it's the cop who reviews the camera footage and issues the citation. The footage from the camera, and the Enterprise computer, are EVIDENCE; the people who reviewed the evidence and filed charges or issued citations are the accusers.
I am so glad we are done with Enterprise episodes! Oh no did they do a courtroom episode? Please tell me they didn't. I can only imagine how dizzy Archer would have gotten from dramatically turning over and over again!
Cogley feels like a character taken out of a different episode
I think he doesn't really have a home in this story, I remember the first time I ever saw this episode thinking his inclusion would take the story in a radically different direction
What I always thought was strange was that Kirk...who is on trial for Murder...is just allowed to go running around the enterprise with a phaser for...reasons...
An early example of writers not having a good enough idea of how computers work to write one in a realistic fashion. I get the idea that they saw a computer as more akin to a brain, and anything that would change the records would cause the equivalent of brain damage.
Come to think of it, not actually the first time they make that connection, like how in Spock's Brain, Spock's Brain is stolen to be used as a computer.
I still haven't heard a good explanation as to where Jamie's mom is. I mean surely she's not just running around at the base on her own, yeah? Also, NEVER hire the defense attorney that the prosecution picks out for you.
In this age of CGI and AI, maybe we can remaster ST:TOS episodes so as to make the stunt man resemble William Shatner.
I knew the heartbeat joke was coming and i still CACKLED.
Is it just me, or does Jamie bear a strong resemblance to Cogley?
I like this because of the drama and those sharp looking uniforms.
Oh, you missed my favorite detail from this episode. They amplify the heartbeats on the ship by 1 to the 4th power (which would be multiplying by 1, or effectively doing nothing). Obviously they meant 10⁴ but a typo turned it into 1⁴.
I like to think that they asked an engineer to give them 1³ or 1⁴ amplification, and he spent 12 hours complaining about this impossible herculean task to get an extra day or two of R&R from the unsuspecting commanding officer. That engineer is my hero!
Blast! I never considered that aspect of the episode. Now I gotta know what an ion pod is.😂
1960's computers have very little resemblance to modern computers, not just in power, but how they worked. It makes sense that they weren't able to predict the paradigm change in computers, even if they could predict that they would get better.
pleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasepleasePLEASE do the tng episode with Ardra 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The Kardi trial lovable Miles for terrorism has to be high on the list but The Measure if a Man is #1.
Let me be the first to like this video. I have been so excited for this series. Keep up the amazing work Steve :)
I'm rewatching some of TNG, and Voyeger, where they approach equal.rights for androids, equal rights for
How do you spell “Sabo taeg” ?
I guess you’d have to ask Bill Shatner.