Original air date: February 2, 1967
SYNOPSIS
Kirk draws a court martial in the negligent death of a crewman.
CANON CONTEXT
RECAP
Hold on to your big boy/girl pants cause this is a wild one! The Enterprise just had to weather a literal storm that resulted in one dead crewman. While it’s undergoing repairs at starbase 11 his logs on the death of an important crewman (also friend of Captain Kirk) his account of what happened and what the computer say’s happened do not match. The computer shows he deliberately murdered the crewman and unless he takes the suggestion of Commodore Stone to blame his “error” on being overworked and fatigued and a starship captain he will face court martial that can lead to his immediate expulsion from the federation! Talk about escalation! And we’re only about ten minutes in at this point.
Shout out to Commodore Stone who is very stoic and passionate about the federation. He truly wants to help Captain Kirk if only to avoid a stain on the federation that he just won’t have on his watch. I appreciate his sticking to the letter of the law but also allowing every possible defense there is to counter what Kirk is being accused of.
Of course, Kirk knows he innocent and will be proven so regardless of what the computer says he did. He knows what he did! And right away we meet the prosecution, who just so happens to be an attractive woman well acquainted with the captain. Is it just me or does he have one waiting for him at every port?
She does what she can to warn him and make him take his charges seriously. She even finds him the best attorney possible to mount his defense which is a pretty simple one. While the prosecution calls several witnesses to prove Kirk acted with malice and intent when he discovered Lt. Commander Benjamin Finney hated him, and killed him.
Going back a tick, the actual charge is that during the storm this Ben Finney was up on the duty roster to enter a pod. Why this needed to occur during the storm is still a bit unclear to me. But Kirk is accused of ejecting the pod earlier than he claims. He says they were in red alert and that he gave Finney ample time to exit the pod. The computer says they were still in yellow alert when he ejected the pod and gave Finney no time. Pretty dicey stuff.
Then there’s the matter of Ben Finney’s daughter who has two important and oddly disjointed scenes. In the first she’s accusing Kirk of murdering her father in a highly volatile state where even I felt for the girl.
Then not twenty minutes later she’s apologizing profusely and begging Kirk’s attorney to help him not get fired!? Wow! It seems the scene missing in between those was cut and reduced to a single line where she explains her change of heart came after she read the letters her father wrote to his mother long ago about Kirk. Also, she was named after him!
At the eleventh hour, after Samuel T. Cogley, Kirk’s attorney, tries every possible angle he can think of, it seems all hope is lost.
The most damning evidence is when the court is shown the actions that happen on the Enterprise. We’ll ignore the fact that during the Menagerie two-part episodes when this was done everyone was freaking out because this kind of view of the bridge is supposed to be impossible. And yet, in this circumstance no one questions it and simply watches as the screen clearly shows Kirk releasing the pod during yellow alert! Not good!
The only way to get out of this problem comes while Spock decides to play a few games of chess against the ships computer that he programmed himself to make the games difficult. When they play each other it should result in a draw. However, Spock has managed to defeat the computer multiple times.
The only answer for this possibility is if someone messed with the computer in some way. Of course, only three people would have the capability to do this: Spock, Kirk, and Ben Finney. If Spock didn’t do this and Kirk claims his innocence, that can only mean ONE THING! Ben Finney isn’t dead! Now, I could go back and rewatch this episode to see if I missed it, but I swear it isn’t until this point that they even mention that Ben Finney’s body isn’t found when the Enterprise attempts to recover the pod.
Now comes the moment, the scene, where Kirk’s attorney pleads to the court to allow them to disprove the computer, his biggest accuser of the crime. They will prove that Finney is hiding somewhere on the ship. How? Simple. They will bring the court to the ship, evacuate all personnel except those necessary to keep it afloat. Then, using some microphone device they will amplify the sound of heartbeats on the ship, removing each heartbeat one at a time until seemingly everyone should be gone from amplification and there should just be silence on the ship. But when this exercise is complete these is still one heartbeat heard. Ben Finney’s?
Kirk goes to find him hidden in engineering and the show down between the two men begins. A fight, of course, with some of the worst stunt double usage I’ve seen, but I digress.
In the end, Ben Finney is forced to reveal how to save the ship because his daughter is brought on board and he doesn’t want to kill her. Kirk’s attorney goes on to defend Ben Finney to help him, Kirk’s charges are dropped, and the Enterprise can move on to its next destination.
This was really well done. Well acted and well played. Easily one of my favorites for this season.
DID THEY REALLY SAY THAT?
Cogley: Rights, sir, human rights! The Bible. The Code of Hammurabi, and of Justinian. The Magna Carta. The Constitution of the United States. The Fundamental Declarations of the Martian Colonies. The Statutes of Alpha III. Gentlemen - these documents all speak of rights. Rights of the accused to a trial by his peers, to be represented by counsel. The rights of cross-examination. But most importantly, the right to be confronted by the witnesses against him - a right to which my client's been denied.
Areel Shaw: Your Honor, that is ridiculous. We've produced the witnesses in court. My learned opponent had the opportunity to see them, cross-examine them...
Cogley: All but one. The most devastating witness against my client is not a human being, it's a machine. An information system. The computer log of the Enterprise. And I ask this court adjourn and reconvene aboard that vessel.
Areel Shaw: I protest, Your Honor.
Cogley: And I repeat! I speak of rights! A machine has none. A man must! My client has the right to face his accuser. And if you do not grant him that right, you have brought us down to the level of the machine. Indeed, you have elevated that machine above us. I ask that my motion be granted. And more than that, gentlemen, in the name of a humanity fading in the shadow of the machine, I demand it. I demand it!