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| Jimmy wants big boom. |
What's most immediately interesting, to start with, is that we seem to have encountered a temporal event of our own and skipped several episodes. The Federation was established in “Arena”, and Starfleet way back in “Court Martial” but we haven't seen much of either of them since and it didn't seem to alter the status quo of the show in any meaningful way. The Enterprise still putted about on routine patrol for the most part. “The Alternative Factor” and “Tomorrow is Yesterday” gave us some sweeping, dramatic shakeups, but both of those seemed like special exceptions: Not quite narrative collapses, but definitely temporary crises in the way things worked. Still, nothing we didn't really think we wouldn't come back from. The only indication things might be changing at all was in, ironically enough, Gene Roddenberry's own “The Return of the Archons”. In “A Taste of Armageddon”, however, the Federation now has the full name of the United Federation of Planets (implying a structure larger than just Earth and its colonies) and the Enterprise is now escorting its ambassadors on a mission to open up friendly negotiations with civilizations around the galaxy (confirming it). This is, to understate things considerably, a rather immense shift in standard operating procedure for Star Trek.
A cursory glance at the credits reveals this to be not completely unprecedented or unexpected, as this is the second script from Gene Coon, who, recall, penned “Arena” himself as well. This one is also credited to a Robert Hamner, but, aside from an interesting note that he is listed as the creator of the police procedural S.W.A.T., I can't find a lot of biographical information on him and not having seen that show personally I'm somewhat at a loss to talk about his positionality and interests as a writer. But Coon is a known quantity to us by now, and as his name shows up twice, as both the co-writer of the episode and the current showrunner, it's probably safe to attribute an at least not-insignificant amount of the ethics here to him. And besides this makes sense as “A Taste of Armageddon” is very much the evolution of the territory we first found ourselves in with “Arena”.
At first glance this episode would seem to be about the juxtaposition of the Enterprise crew and the world of Federation diplomats. Ambassador Fox is depicted first as just as much of an obstructive bureaucrat as Commissioner Ferris in “The Galileo Seven” and he frequently butts heads with Kirk, and later Scott, in a rote safety of the mission vs. safety of the ship debate that's already become a stock and hackneyed Star Trek plot. It's Fox's bizarre fixation on opening relations with the Eminians at all costs that puts the lives of everyone on the ship in grave jeopardy, leads to Kirk’s away team being captured and thrusts everyone headfirst into the EminianXVendikan war. Following the logic the show has established up to this point, it would seem sensible to read the episode's central conflict as one between distant officials in fancy suits and the soldiers on the front lines who know the reality of living day to day on the edge. Further evidence for this interpretation would be in the scenes where Fox keeps acting bullheaded and naively trustworthy, lacking the gut sense of trouble Scott and McCoy have and the climax, where, after being rescued from the disintegration chamber, he flatly tells Spock that he's “never been a soldier” but “learns quickly”.
What's also interesting is this also further condemns the Federation. Absolutely nothing related to the UFP seems to work in this episode: The Federation's obsessive demand to open up trade agreements in the NGC 321 cluster seem comically overstated and it's really never fully explained why the area is so important to them. We just have to open up diplomatic relations because...they're diplomatic relations. You've got to open diplomatic relations, I guess. Fox's overtures just about get him and the crew sentenced to death, and every other discussion tactic he attempts fails both decisively and hilariously. Diplomacy is shown to be, on the whole, ineffective and overly convoluted at best and blinkered to the point of being actually dangerously counterproductive at worst. Fox does get a manner of redemption in the end when he offers to stay behind on Eminiar VII to help moderate talks between them and Vendikar, but it's clear this isn't quite in either his job description or his area of expertise: He says he'll do the best he can, but by no means does he give us the indication he's the best person for the job, or even that this is the right job for the situation at hand. Even Spock says normal diplomatic procedures aren't going to work here.
So obviously what we have is another chest-thumping, tale about honour and duty and the rugged, manly heroism of the militaristic way of life, a la “The Corbomite Manuever” or, to a lesser extent, “Court Martial”? Not quite. Coon may have been an ex-marine, but sometimes it takes a veteran to realise the ugliness that can exist in the world. The reality is “A Taste of Armageddon” is a deeply, deeply cynical story. Just about every element of the show at every level is seriously problematized. Fox is misguided and dangerous, but so is everyone else: The Eminians and the Vendikans have made killing clinical and routine because war is too important to their cultural heritage to move beyond and even Kirk and the Enterprise crew, who are definitely meant to have the moral and ethical high ground, are retroactively made, and by their own admission, natural-born, instinctive killers. On the one hand this episode isn't quite as dark, somber and brutal as “Balance of Terror” as it does have some exciting setpieces and Kirk, Scott, Spock and McCoy all get to deliver some very rousing and triumphant speeches. On the other hand, this episode is extremely disquieting in some other areas, namely, in that it makes the audience *uncomfortable* for liking these things.
Indeed, this is essentially the entire point of the story-Kirk freely calls himself a barbarian and a bloodthirsty killer, is willing to risk the total destruction of both Eminiar VII and Vendikar and his big speech involves widening the net of that condemnation to everyone on both planets, the Enterprise and basically all of humanity itself. The central failing of the Eminians is that, in reducing war to a numbers game, they've forgotten how horrific and destructive it is and why it's something to be avoided. But this is by no means a hypothetical or a thought experiment: Coon has a very clear target in mind he's satirizing here, and it's us. Or, at least, the US in the 1960s: Dave Gerrold, an important Star Trek creative figure who we'll start to talk at length about next season, says the computers tallying up the simulated war casualties was a direct reference to, and condemnation of, the way the mainstream news in the United States at the time covered the constantly updating ground reports of similar casualties Vietnam War. This goes beyond problematizing war as a spectacle to attacking war as a mundane reality, and no-one is spared from judgment and reproach: In order to teach us war is monstrous, Kirk turns himself into a monster and, in the process, shows us we're all monsters too. It is unbelievably disturbing.
The key line comes in the denouement, where Kirk states how “instinct can be fought”, and all it takes to start working towards peace is for a killer to say “I'm not going to kill today”. Which I mean yes, but...Bloody Hell is that depressing. It must be stressed that absolutely no-one in the story denies that humans (or I guess humanoids, as the Eminians and Vendikans aren't meant to be human) are at heart murderous, bloodthirsty savage killers. The best we can hope for is that we eventually figure out how to work against our baser predilections to reach some semblance of social harmony. And well...There just really isn't anywhere to go from that, is there? As much as Coon's stinging critique actually does stick, my objection is we really don't have any actual heroes here. The Federation is, again, tunnel-visioned, self-interested and shortsighted and Kirk and the Enterprise are essentially telling us they're all murderous savages and we should feel bad for watching them.
This is particularly awful coming off of “The Return of the Archons”, an episode all about Gene Roddenberry just straight-up bearing all and saying no, he's not a utopian and neither is Star Trek. Now we have Gene Coon telling us to our face, and in no uncertain terms, that we're all terrible, cold-blooded monsters. In my darker moments I might agree with Coon's indictment, but I'd kind of like to think we're capable of being more than that. We don't quite want a utopia: Roddenberry (and I can't believe I'm actually saying this) quite sufficiently laid out the problems with that particular intellectual tradition last time. What we need is hopefulness and optimism; some kind of hint at a way forward. But we don't get anything along those lines in “A Taste of Armageddon”: There's no-one to actually root for here, nor any inkling there's a way out of this. This isn't just not Vaka Rangi, it feels like Star Trek throwing in the towel and flat out giving up on the possibility, however distant, of ever being Vaka Rangi at all.
In the last post I tried to argue that despite Roddenberry rejecting any claims of being a utopian in “The Return of the Archons”, there was still enough that was positive and hopeful about Star Trek that the chance of it remaining *idealistic* was still there. Is it possible to do some similar salvage work with Coon and “A Taste of Armageddon”? Very possibly. I'm at least not as willing to give up on the show as the show seems ready to give up on itself here. Not after 24 episodes and with two more seasons, five more TV shows, twelve movies and a frankly frightening amount of comic books, video games and mass-market paperback tie-in books in my future. Firstly, there is the truism argument: It's a fact that countless people have read Star Trek as expressly progressive and idealistic series, so there has to be something here to support that. It's simply ludicrous to expect *that many* people to be misreading the show. As I count myself as among those people, given the fact I'm doing this blog at all, I'd tend to agree with them at least in the very general sense. Last time I talked about how the mere presence of a mixed-race, mixed-gender and mixed-species crew is enough to inspire many people in spite of how unintentional or coincidental that might have been. I still stand by that, but let's go one further. Let's go back to Coon's last episode.
Putting aside the possibly problematic aspects of their characters for the moment, the Metrons said humanity showed great promise. Kirk displayed “the advanced trait of mercy”, as it were, surprising them (and Coon, apparently, as well, given his attitude in this episode). We're not quite good enough to make the cut now, but it's entirely possible we might someday. I think the same can be said about Star Trek as a whole. Nearly a full season in, we have a rocky, confused and occasionally actually brilliant show that has the makings of something truly great about it. It's not good enough to actually live up to its potential, and it's frequently acting actively contrary to realising it far too often for my liking, but it's worth keeping in mind when we caught our first glimpse of the Enterprise bridge in 1964 during the opening for “The Cage”, there was absolutely no indication the show would ever be able to achieve even the things it has 24 episodes in. I'm also lucky enough to speak from a privileged position: I know the future. I know what Star Trek will eventually beget, and it's even more wonderful, bizarre, heartening, inspirational and magickal then even the most wild speculation about the show's prospects as they stand now would suggest.
That this franchise will eventually spawn that, and still has the potential to become even greater things even today, is all the redemption I need.
Most episodes of TOS (or any Star Trek series besides Enterprise) I can't really evaluate, because I haven't watched them in so long that they are just childhood memories. Given that, the ones that have left a firm imprint on me are the ones that I remember fondly. And this is absolutely one of them. To me, this episode defines one of the early shows themes, which is that logic and bureaucracy, bereft of human feeling or ethical guidance, can lead humanity down a nightmarish path. I really love the premise of this episode- it really feels like Golden Age sci fi to me.
ReplyDeleteIt also encapsulates an ongoing theme in American (and British, for that matter) life in the 50s and 60s- the fear of conformity, of the organisation man, and of bureaucracy. After World War II, American men worried that there was an erosion of the traditional foundations of masculinity in society: autonomy, individualism, and personal achievement. Computers (and communists, for that matter) seem to exemplify the end result of this fear: that modern society will become led only by heartless, number crunching bureaucracies. As a result, a lot of the sci-fi in these two decades works as a reaction to this. On the other side of the pond, Doctor Who's the Ice Warriors is tackling the exact same idea at the exact same time. In the Ice Warriors, human leaders don't know how to act without first being told by computers, and it takes the Doctor and his intuitive, personal mode of doing things to make the right decision. Here, Kirk takes the same role: it takes someone with genuine emotions, someone who is defined through personal, individualised achievement, to topple the system of pure logic.
You've touched on this theme a couple times in previous episodes, but treated it a) as a silly moral, when I think it captures a fundamental cultural worry of the time period, and b) treated it as something only Roddenberry is concerned with, when Coon and basically every other sci fi writer (and quite a few mainstream writers) were tackling the same idea. I think it's also important to recognise the gendered component: Kirk exemplifies manhood because he can work within an bureaucracy without becoming subordinate to it. In doing so, he's teaching us how to navigate the office jobs of the sixties and fifties while still keeping our manhood intact.
Sorry if that's all over the place- I'm a historian, but it takes me forever to write anything, and so I normally save my writing energy for the papers I have to write. So when I post on message boards my writing comes off as really scatterbrained. But this episode touches on one of my specialties as a historian, so I wanted to talk to you about it.
And you've done a very good job articulating your thoughts on it! I do, however, disagree on some accounts and will respond to them.
DeleteFirstly I have to state upfront this is a viewpoint I'm never going to be especially sympathetic to, regardless of whether or not it's made in the 1960s or today. My beliefs in regards to gender roles are "anarcha-feminist" to the point of "borderline female supremacist" so, bluntly, I'm not going to have a lot of time for people fretting about the degradation of proper, traditional masculine values.
I'm also not entirely convinced Kirk is the best example to call on as an example of traditional manhood anyway, given William Shatner is blatantly playing him as a campy drag action hero as far as I'm concerned and the homoeroticism between him and Leonard Nimoy's Spock is legendary. I grant Roddenberry might have seen him that way (this is the same guy who cast Jeffry Hunter in "The Cage" and seemed to think Jean-Luc Picard was equitable to John Wayne, after all) but I don't think that's at all the way Shatner sees him, or indeed what his pop culture legacy truly is.
In regards to the thread of skepticism over emergent computer technology and the subsuming of human individuality, I fully intend to cover that in TOS, just not quite yet. I figure "The Ultimate Computer" is the best place to talk about that and its appearance in previous episodes is more nascent and ill-defined in my opinion. Right now I'm more interested in how the show as it exists in 1967 is slowly assembling the pieces that will make it a pop culture staple.
If I've dismissed anything Roddenberry's penned as a "silly moral" it's because that's how he writes and demonstrably the kind of thing he first created Star Trek to be about. Roddenberry likes very simplistic morality plays at this point, and in many ways the science fiction trappings are, at least under him, almost more trendy window dressing; an attempt to make the show current. Coon's brought in more of a sci-fi mindset and seems much more willing to look at the show from a 1960s sci-fi perspective and what the ramifications of that might be, but we're still in the early stages of this. Not for much longer though: In three episode's time we get the first recognizably "Star Trek" story of TOS and it's brilliant.
I grant the thread you're interested in is there, but I think it's a bit more complicated than that and thus requires a lot of context and qualifiers to properly analyze in this specific case. What makes Star Trek interesting to me is that it's a jumbled mess of a lot of different ideas and concepts that shouldn't, and really still don't, go together. It's contradictory and paradoxical, frequently to its advantage, but just as frequently to its detriment as well.
Well, I mean, we're all feminists here, so that's neither here nor there. But I think you can discuss how those in power view the degradation of masculinity without necessarily making moral judgements on the legitimacy of those views. I think often it's our goal to see how people viewed the world around them, whether or not they're male or female, privileged or not. I'm not a fan at all of traditional masculinity, whatever that means. But it's a common theme in the 50s and 60s, and thus it pervades a lot of popular culture.
DeleteI grant you your reading of Kirk as a camp hero, and that's an interesting one that I haven't seen before. But he's often written like mid-fifties John Wayne. I'm in particular thinking of Wayne's role in Big Jim McClain, where he tries to root out a communist conspiracy in Hawaii. Most of that film is showing how John Wayne, as a representative of the government, uses the power he's granted to work together with others, and in doing so mutes the effects of the dehumanising bureaucracy. Often, I see Kirk doing just that: he's a recognisably male voice, but one that functions in a world that requires teamwork and cooperation. He's often used, as he is in this episode, as the voice of humanity that serves as the ethical check on bureaucracy.
I also wouldn't characterise my reading of Kirk as a image of traditional masculinity, but rather as a guide to masculinity in a new era. Kirk can't be the cowboy that Roddenberry envisions Pike as. Instead, he has to find a way to work within the system and still retain masculine virtues that 1960s American culture still values. If anything, I think he's a flailing around for a new type of masculinity, one that melds together the strengths of the organisation man (Spock) and the older intuitive (inner-directed) McCoy. But of course, like you have tried to demonstrate throughout this blog, it is what it is: confused.
Granted, Shatner might be playing against this, that's totally fair. But I don't think that means that it's not there.
I guess I just see the logic versus emotion as being the defining theme that pervades all of TOS. But fair enough if you're saving this thread for later, I'll be excited to see it.
Anyways, thanks for the reply, it's a good conversation.
I think part of this aspect is that the things considered "masculine values" at the time really, of course, aren't; stuff like, as Aaron said, autonomy, individualism, and personal achievement. And thus I think it's reasonable enough to look at people's perception of the loss of those things without it necessarily being shackled to Those Damn Commies Flouridating Our Pure Natural Essence.
Delete@Aaron, Unonnilium
DeleteFair enough, and I'd just like to make clear I wasn't fingering Aaron personally in any of my critique if it wasn't: The crisis of masculinity and how it relates to feminism is a theme I've worked a lot with other places, and I was just trying to lay out my views on the matter.
The bureaucracy argument is an interesting one and I agree there's something there, I'm just not sure it's as applicable to this particular story, which I see as being just overwhelmingly cynical and critical to everyone. Yes, the Federation (via Fox) is depicted as bull-headed and stubborn, but I have a hard time seeing Kirk's "we're all bloodthirsty murders and monsters and the way to move forward is to internalize this" argument as a viable response to it either.
As for the Eminians, I see their failing as the fact they've turned war into a mundane reality, not that they've become too focused on computers. The bureaucratic structure their government has is shown to be the least of their problems, and furthermore I just don't see the script allying itself with anyone here: It strikes me as a particularly bleak bit of Vietnam-era despair that goes out of its way to problematize everyone involved. If anything I see this thread more present in something like "The Galileo Seven", "Court Martial" or even "The Return of the Archons" than "A Taste of Armageddon".
I agree the logic vs. emotions debate is a central one to Star Trek but I guess I read it a bit differently. The thing about Number One is she was very clearly Gene Roddenberry's favourite character. She was written expressly for Majel Barret for one, but also Roddenberry has said he came up with the idea after musing that pure, untainted logic would be a preferable way to handle certain crisis situations as it would allow a person to think without being distracted by emotions. As a result tying this to masculinity is problematic to me, even granting all of Number One's significant feminism problems and Roddenberry's own confused attitude about gender roles. That aside, I see Roddenberry pretty clearly in *favour* of an emotionless logician character, and even after Number One became Spock a lot of the earliest episodes in his tenure seemed to side pretty unequivocally with him.
What I see Roddenberry interested in now is trying to balance logic and emotional instinct and weighing the two and trying to come up with some middle ground approach that is both a better approach to leadership than exists now that still recognises the value of human emotion. In that regard though the key character for me is Spock, not Kirk, who is now explicitly half-human and half-Vulcan and this, tied with Leonard Nimoy's performance, allows the tension between his logic and his emotions to become even more obvious than it would be otherwise. There's a story coming up two episodes from now that deals overtly with this.
(cont'd)
(and apologies for misseplling Ununnilium's name)
DeleteAs for Kirk himself, camp is certainly a way to reconceptualise masculinity: Gay men would certainly like to be called masculine and drag performers definitely know what the word means, they just decentralise and shift its definition and connotations in an attempt to make it less authoritarian. I'm just not entirely sure Shatner is interested in masculinity in the same way Roddenberry is, and I'm still trying to tease out how Kirk's relationship to Spock and McCoy works. Aaron's analysis reminds me a little of the id/ego/superego debate I mentioned in "The Enemy Within", but I personally haven't seen many of the episodes since then lend themselves especially well to that kind of reading.
Certainly "autonomy, individualism and personal achievement" were considered "masculine values", at least by Gene Roddenberry: He pretty much says precisely that in "Mudd's Women". But again, as with the computer argument, I maintain "The Ultimate Computer" is the story to talk about that in the context of, not "A Taste of Armageddon".
The thing with the reading of Kirk as a hyper-masculine figure is that it's old hat, almost taken for granted. The sheer amount of multi-terrestrial venereal diseases he picked up and spread over the course of the series is one of the most familiar jokes about Star Trek. It's so familiar that it isn't even funny anymore. So a blog like this, looking for new angles to take on Star Trek criticism, would be advised to stay away from that dry well.
DeleteThe contrast between Kirk and Pike can be quite illuminating, though. Both are clearly cowboys, Wild West archetypes translated into sci-fi contexts. Pike is the sheriff: the stoic lawman who thinks of justice as following orders. But Kirk sees through his orders to the morality underlying them, and if the morality of his orders is uncool, he'll point that out and fight against them. If Pike is Gary Cooper, then Kirk is Clint Eastwood. Star Trek's intriguing take on this is to make the spacefaring Clint Eastwood into a figure of authority. He's a starship captain, occupying a place in the chain of command. But it's a place that gives him freedom.
Jumping quite far ahead, this is why Kirk's character chafes at being made an admiral in the movies. Being a starship captain gives you the power of institutionalized authority, but also the space to follow a morality beyond the bureaucratic demands of the authority. Kirk is out in the daily life of the universe, where he can see the clean lines of plans and designs that make perfect sense in the abstraction of an admiral's office for the laughable idiocy they make in the world. Kirk is a hero, not only to the viewing audience, but also within the diegetic world of Star Trek, even though his most remarkable moments are when he disobeys orders or kicks his way through bureaucratic authority, even the authority that employs him.
It reminds me of how Phil Sandifer analyzed Robert Holmes' vision of Doctor Who. The Doctor can exist well outside the constraints of authority while he fights against its injustices because the TARDIS is a space free of bureaucratic hierarchies to which he can retreat when the adventure is over. Kirk's home is in Starfleet, in his quarters on a military starship, and he's a captain in the military order. So the subversiveness of his character, that voice against bureaucracy in the name of the ideals he represents at his best moments as a Eastwood rebel cowboy, must simultaneously exist within that authority's structure. That's why Kirk is so wily and slippery. A manly camp hero. A captain who won't take orders.
One of the central character narratives of Star Trek is Kirk seeking freedom within the constraints of his military life.
I'll definitely agree that, in this one, the use of computers isn't based around anxieties around computers; they're just a tool here, only flawed because they're part of the dehumanization process.
Delete@Adam
Delete"The thing with the reading of Kirk as a hyper-masculine figure is that it's old hat, almost taken for granted. The sheer amount of multi-terrestrial venereal diseases he picked up and spread over the course of the series is one of the most familiar jokes about Star Trek. It's so familiar that it isn't even funny anymore. So a blog like this, looking for new angles to take on Star Trek criticism, would be advised to stay away from that dry well."
Oh, don't worry: I plan to stray as far from the dry wall as it is possible for me to travel, not just IRT Kirk, but in many other areas too :-)
"A captain who won't take orders."
You've touched on one of the core tenets of why I do actually like Star Trek and think it's valuable from a progressive perspective. And Kirk won't be the last person we meet that will be applicable to.
Interesting. I don't see this episode this way at all.
ReplyDeleteTo me, it does have clear heroes - the crew of the Enterprise. Yes, they're flawed heroes, but what they're showing us is that the only way to overcome one's flaws is by acknowledging them and consciously deciding not to give in to them.
For all that this story is powered by Vietnam-rage, I always thought it was expressing simple lessons in a straightforward way - don't believe it when they tell you about the "necessity" of war or the idea of a "clean" war; don't let people sitting far away from the ugliness of war dictate its course; don't make war automatic. Simple lessons, but ones that don't get said enough.
I like that reading a lot and it would certainly fit with Gene Coon's larger attitude in regards to Star Trek but that was a very difficult reading for me to tease out in the context of the month this story goes out in. It's bookended by some spectacularly bleak work IMO.
DeleteBut yes, railing against war becoming mundane is most definitely a worthwhile message and worthy of praise, even if it does seem to cripple everyone in the process.
That's fair. Basically, this is the reading I took of it when I saw it growing up.
DeleteI think it's true that Kirk & the crew do come off as heroic, at least relative to the others in this episode. To me, Kirk’s ‘savage’ words about humanity are not hopelessly cynical, they’re intended for effect, part of his strategy to save the crew and stop the killing (or rather, the brainwashed suicides). From the start, Kirk was firmly against putting the ship in danger until forced to do so by the ambassador. And finally Kirk’s actions do convince Anan to try negotiating for peace. Still I also agree that the main reason for associating Trek with optimism is not so much stories like this, but because “the mere presence of a mixed race, mixed gender and mixed species crew is enough to inspire many people.”
Delete