Patterns of Force

"Patterns of Force" (Feb. 16, 1968) Old TV Guide synopsis: 'On the planet Ekos, Kirk tries to prevent history from repeating itself when a self-styled Fuhrer begins leading his people down a bloody Nazi path.' The knowledge that Earth historian John Gill (David Brian) has come to the planet Ekos and helped instigate the National Socialist movement of Nazi Germany for their efficiency is almost too much for Kirk and Spock to bear, infiltrating Nazi headquarters to learn the truth. It's hardly a surprise that Deputy Fuhrer Melakon (Skip Homeier, later seen in "The Way to Eden") has been the actual leader, declaring war on peaceful Zion for his own bloody ends. Both the Vulcan mind meld and McCoy's injections are needed to bring a comatose John Gill out of his drugged stupor to restore peace to the two neighboring planets. If the actual Nazi regime were this incompetent, there might never have been a second World War, but highly enjoyable nonetheless.

Following on the heels of "A Private Little War," this is another serious stab at presenting the dire consequences of interfering with the natural progression of a culture. This time, the contamination is Nazism, a plague of thought / speech spread on a planet called Ekos. The Ekosians, a warlike primitive people, are subverted to channel their aggression against their peaceful neighboring planet, Zeon. The Zeons were more advanced up until a few years ago; but now, Ekos has the same technology and plans are made to exterminate the Zeons. It all started innocently enough. It's a bit strange. The Federation has had this non-interference directive, the Prime Directive, in place for at least a century or more. I understand a sometime aggressive hotshot like Kirk rationalizing around this directive at times of intense situational imperative, but now an elderly Federation historian, a supposed expert on what tampering with history means, decides to re-arrange a culture's status quo on what appears to be a whim - a chance to play God, as McCoy puts it.

The main problem with episodes such as this has to do with constraints related to budget, make-up and so forth. The show is unable to capture the atmosphere of an actual alien planet or culture. Rather, it appears as if Kirk and Spock have transported themselves into Earth's past yet again, to Europe during World War II when it was dominated by Nazi Germany. There is no make-up involved for the supposed two alien races here; they are, for all practical purposes, other humans. The Ekosians are the Nazis here, where-as the Zeons are stand-ins for the persecuted Jews. The episode does succeed in capturing some of that brutality associated with the Nazi regime and there's plenty of suspense as Kirk & Spock attempt to infiltrate the Nazi HQ to see their Federation rep, now Fuhrer. If anything, this is the serious version of "A Piece of the Action" - the scary contemplation of how an entire society can be deluded into following a certain doctrine. But, did we need a sf version of actual history to get the point across? The most intriguing aspect is Melakon, the deputy Fuhrer who is, in fact, the actual incarnation of Hitler or Himmler - take your pick.

Science fiction is usually about the present or the recent past. Fanciful new technologies are used, and mis-used, just as real ones have been exploited in the real world, setting up moral paradigms for our heroes to resolve correctly this time. Setting a story on some alien world and changing the names of the players usually doesn't hide the underlying message to anyone mindful of the historical parallels.

"Patterns of Force" follows in this tradition, though it takes the somewhat unusual route of transplanting real situations of Earth's past to the requisite alien world. Skirting the risk of taking the easy route and simply condemning the unredeemable, making the lesson a bit too didactic, the episode instead veers in another direction entirely and becomes a wonderful critique and examination of enduring human nature and frailty.

The Starship Enterprise, lead by the redoubtable Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), is looking for lost historian John Gill (a barely-there David Brian) when it is fired upon by a missile from a planet that shouldn't have that capability. Kirk and his Vulcan sidekick Spock (Leonard Nimoy) beam down to investigate. In rapid sequence, they find out that the planet is controlled by real, honest-to-goodness Nazis, are captured and almost killed, and then find themselves in cahoots with an active resistance movement.

So, we have the set-up, that this is going to be an examination of bad, bad Naziism, right? Well, perhaps, but that is not the episode's real target. Wisely taking the brutality and illogic of Naziism for granted, instead, our heroes use that system's inherent weakness against it as they retain focus and search for the lost Gill.

Valora Noland, born the day after Pearl Harbor to parents who had fled Wiesbaden after Kristalnacht, and named after a speech by Winston Churchill, reportedly (understandably) hated playing a Nazi figure. However, she is the episode's blazing star. She plays Daras, a Nazi propaganda hero. However, is she really a Nazi, or something else? That answer is provided quickly, and emphatically, and thereafter Daras becomes more of a meditation on the media than anything political. Watch her preen as Kirk holds a camera in her face, and flounce up the stairs of the Nazi headquarters as if going up the red carpet at the Academy Awards (almost an inside joke there, I think). Valora knew how to act with her eyes, watch them closely throughout for some real emoting. Some may decry the lack of facial prosthetics and so forth (so painfully over-used in later incarnations of the series) to make the aliens look "different." However, this supposed negative turns into a major asset when it permits you to experience the emotions flitting across Valora's face as she first holds a gun on Kirk, then abruptly and surprisingly turns and fires at someone else. Strong females on Star Trek seldom fared well in the final analysis, but Daras defies that peril against all odds. A fabulous role played fabulously.

A fascinating aspect is the casual, almost backhanded slap taken at the reality of Naziism. For instance, the Nazis are shown to be infiltrated with the very people they were persecuting. Many real Nazis had, for example, Jewish origins, including perhaps Hitler himself, and they wasted a great deal of time investigating or justifying each others' phantom racial purity. This subtly supports the series' recurring message that we are all morally interchangeable and thus responsible for our moral choices. The absurd use of physiognomy to categorize and denigrate is completely sent up when arch-villain Malakon (Skip Homeier, in one of his several awesome guest star turns in the original series) pompously derides the smartest man on the planet (Spock) for his "low forehead, denoting stupidity." But the target is much wider than simply an indefensible political system and its self-serving justifications. The ending takes a sharp jab at modern media in general as being simply a tool to be mis-used even with the best of intentions. Daras is hailed for the cameras as a great hero (again) despite the fact that everyone in the room knows that she indeed may be a hero, but certainly not for the reasons the media will state.

The episode is about Nazis, yes, but that is just the launching pad for the real insights. Everyone in the cast gives a rousing performance, and I wouldn't be surprised if they felt something personal about the entire experience. This wasn't the only time TOS Star Trek mentioned Nazis (see "The City on the Edge of Forever,") and its treatment of them is extremely honest and, dare I say it, even-handed as a sort of aberration that somehow crept out of the Id's cage. Some will decry this episode as politically incorrect and the notion that anyone at any time could fancy Naziism as "efficient" as completely insane, but it certainly is possible that some future (and possibly wacky or senile, we learn absolutely nothing about the man) historian could completely misread history. And that reveals another point to this tale, the danger of misreading history from a distant vantage point. Never forget.... Human nature and enduring reality is the larger target, one that is hit dead center by a stellar cast and script.

This is the episode that somewhat undermines my theory that a lot of the cheesiness and campiness of the series was unintentional. Roddenberry and company get very serious in Patterns of Force, and understandably so--this is the episode about Nazism.

Nazism is broached through a very common theme for the series--an alien culture has been corrupted by an outside force. In this case, as in many others, the outside force was a previous explorer from the Federation, one who chose to ignore the Prime Directive of non-influential interference.

For most of the episode, Star Trek doesn't have anything very unprecedented to say about Nazism. It's a fairly literal presentation/examination, with a race from a neighboring planet serving as a barely veiled representation of Jews. Towards the end of the episode, however, there is a pretty controversial stance taken towards Nazism--it arrives in the justification for breaking the Prime Directive. Scripter John Meredyth Lucas and Roddenberry are clever enough to wrap their controversial point in an undermined character who is potentially interpretable as a villain for his decisions.

But the reason this episode is so good and unusual isn't because it has profound things to say about Nazism. It's because it does a lot of typical Star Trek things--like Kirk and Spock being held captive, having to bluff their way out of jams, and so on--in a very unusual, very serious way. We usually have little worry that Kirk and Spock will be shortly out of a locked cell, but here, director Vincent McEveety films a very familiar scene so that it is very suspenseful. Likewise, Spock in incongruous disguises or modes often causes laughter, and frequently the threat of him being revealed when he needs to be disguised is just as promising of humor as tension. Here, there's nothing funny about it, it's instead nail-biting. With laudable help from the make-up department, McEveety also manages to truly make Spock feel alien. Even Shatner gives a serious, intense performance rather than hamming it up this time around, and the same goes for DeForest Kelley. In fact, McEveety so successfully achieves a weighty mood that even the typical, somewhat comical bickering between Spock and McCoy takes on an edge of nastiness in the final scene.

I love Star Trek's normal campiness and cheesiness, but Patterns of Force goes to show that it's just as excellent when they try to keep everything on the straight and narrow.

This is the famous planet evolves into Nazi Germany episode. An envoy comes to a planet whose government structure is in disarray. The man, Gill, decides to implement a new world order based on the National Socialist Party of the 1940's. It's quite efficient for the powerful, but, as usual, there has to be a scapegoat. This is a peaceful civilization which becomes the target of the final solution. There are so many things that make one's eyes pop in this episode. For one thing, the Nazi's are an intercontinental organization (stock footage of thousands greeting the Nazi leadership). Yet, Kirk and Spock beam down, are picked up by a single soldier, and demand to see the Fuhrer (who just happens to be around). Eventually, the get hooked up with an underground movement and use them to infiltrate the headquarters. Even more amazing is that Gill has been drugged and his body propped up in a chair, a microphone concealing his mouth. He supposedly is the source of the usual hate talk. It really looks ridiculous as is the conclusion. It's an interesting idea, but way too much. Oh, for fun, watch the escape from the jail and how it is attained.