(by Collin R. Skocik)
I’m starting to think there’s something unlucky about Starbase 11. Last time the Enterprise went there, Spock abducted Captain Christopher Pike, stole the Enterprise, and wound up standing court martial for mutiny. This time, Kirk is accused of negligently or maliciously causing the death of a crew member and is court martialed.
Many years ago, Kirk had a falling out with his friend Ben Finney when they served together aboard the starship Republic. There, Finney made a mistake, Kirk logged it, and Finney “drew a reprimand and was sent to the bottom of the promotion list.” Finney never forgave Kirk. Now, during a severe ion storm (is there such a thing?), Kirk assigns Finney to the ion pod to take readings, and according to the computer record of the event, Kirk jettisoned the pod when the ship was still on yellow alert—before there was an emergency. Kirk insists the computer record is wrong—he did not jettison the pod until the ship was on red alert.
Kirk’s lawyer is Samuel T. Cogley, one of my favorite guest characters in the series. Played by Elisha Cook—who I’ve seen giving wonderful performances in everything from The Maltese Falcon to Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing to even an episode of Adventures of Superman—Cogley is an irrepressible lover of books. Not electronic books, which are commonplace in the twenty-third century, but real, physical, old-style paper books. Now, is that prescient or what? In today’s world of e-books, I often find myself quoting Cogley: “A computer. I have one of these in my office. Contains all the precedents. A synthesis of all the great legal decisions made throughout time. Ah, I never use it. I’ve got my own system. Books, young man, books. Thousands of them. If time wasn’t so important, I’d show you something. My library. Thousands of books. …This is where the law is. Not in that homogenized, pasteurized synthesizer. Do you want to know the law? The ancient concepts in their own language? Learn the intent of the men who wrote them, from Moses to the tribunal of Alpha III? Books.”
“What an astonishing thing a book is,” Carl Sagan said. “It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”
Beyond my love for the physical form of books, the pleasure of holding them in my hand, feeling and smelling the paper, running my hand over the cover, and enjoying the physicality of it, I fear entrusting our most precious knowledge and stories and experiences to the tenuous digital form with its glitches, constant upgrades, and susceptibility to any number of things that could shut down the grid. And Star Trek will indirectly deal with this in a later episode, when disaster strikes the library complex Memory Alpha…
I continue to have problems with twenty-third century law. When prosecutor Areel Shaw presents to the court the visual extract of the Enterpriselog, showing Kirk hitting the jettison button while the ship was still on yellow alert, Cogley looks astonished. Wait…so Kirk’s lawyer hasn’t seen THE crucial piece of evidence upon which the entire court martial is based? And Cogley, one of the finest lawyers in the galaxy, has no cross examination for any of the witnesses, no evidence, no witnesses of his own, absolutely NOTHING except for calling Kirk to the stand and asking him to tell his version. And the next day he’s about to rest his case, before Spock bursts in with (gasp!) evidence! That’s IT?? That’s the best he can do? Charles Winchester did a better job defending Klinger in M*A*S*H!
All that said, the court martial itself is very well-done, with its line of officers, the computer acting as court reporter, the chair with its lie-detector hand plate. It’s a modern-day military court convincingly projected into the future.
Starbase 11 is the only planet the Enterprise visits twice in the series (not counting Earth and Vulcan). Commodore Mendez has been replaced without explanation by Commodore Stone. It took me many years to realize what a progressive character Stone is. Played by Percy Rodriguez, Stone is commanding, stern, competent, a former starship captain himself. I never gave any thought to the fact that he also happens to be black. Very unusual in the 1960s to find a black character in a position of command—with no reference to his race whatsoever. He’s simply a character.
The Enterprise is a very big and heavy ship, but I don’t understand why its orbit decays so quickly when its impulse power shuts down. We’re not told its altitude, but even the International Space Station, less than two hundred miles up, only requires a boost every few years. Maybe Starbase 11 has a very thick ionosphere; there is a ringed gas giant nearby. I suppose that probably causes a lot of turbulence.
I was surprised to notice that Cogley does not wear a Starfleet uniform. Evidently he’s a civilian. But I have learned that civilian lawyers can work in military courts. That’s interesting.
It’s interesting to watch Kirk wrestling with the question of whether the computer is right or his memory is accurate. He has a moment of doubt before firming, “No, I know what I did!” Memory is notoriously unreliable, where computers are generally taken to be accurate—certainly a visual record of an event is considered infallible. There have been many times something has gone wrong at work and I’ve gone over and over the event in my mind, trying to recall whether or not I made a mistake. When I use an internet connection for my work, there’s a computer in the office that makes a log of everything I do. It will be a scary day if I ever have to challenge that log because my memory tells me something different…
(Collin R. Skocik is a fan of the Star Trek franchise and has written synopses of all 79 episodes of Star Trek’s original series and the first six Star Trek films.)
Principled Thoughts 