Star Trek TOS S01E13, The Conscience of the King

Dir. Gerd Oswald, Wri. Barry Trivers

The Summary: An old friend of Kirk’s ropes him into the hunt for a mass murderer who may be hiding as a Shakespearean actor on Kirk’s own ship.

The Good: You get some good Macbeth and Hamlet references from this one, if that’s your thing. I really like the rapport between Kirk and the other captain he briefly calls. Watching Spock play detective is really cool, and kinda makes me want a spin-off Detective Spock show. It’s fun deciding who’s playing whom in the exchanges between Kirk and the girl of the week, Lenore (Barbara Anderson). She’s more interesting than many others in the category. Kodos (Arnold Moss) is actually quite well acted. I really wonder why didn’t they bring him in until halfway through the episode. He’s got great presence and would have been better used in more scenes. I’m thoroughly relieved that Riley isn’t singing Irish ballads this time—he actually has plot stuff to do, which is a huge improvement. The conclusion is well written and feels authentically Shakespearean.

The Bad: I don’t buy the chemistry between Kirk and Lenore. I think it’s a side effect of the show’s need to turn every female guest star into an object of sexual desire for the captain/the viewer. She would have worked much better as a wily opponent without the romantic entanglements. It is patently unbelievable that any human being, let alone a trained captain, could possibly not realize immediately that the two people are the same. They make almost no attempt to make them look different. Kirk’s treatment of Spock is strangely cold and dismissive, and speaks to the inconsistencies in characterization that still troubled this production for much of the season. We don’t generally think of Kirk shooting down reasonable suggestions from his second in command, but that’s basically the entire episode here. There’s another musical interlude that serves basically no purpose. I am not a fan of when Trek jams out. Kirk actually says, “Logic isn’t enough; I need to feel that he’s guilty.” In what universe does that make any sense at all? As is so often the case, they take way too long to figure out some basic stuff, which makes the middle feel very padded out.

The Review: The fact that Lenore cast her dad as her husband probably should have been your first clue that something was up, guys. Other than that particularly twisted element, this is a fairly standard, workmanlike episode of the show. It’s got a decent core concept with some pretty good guest stars, but it dawdles around and frustrates too much to be one of the greats. Almost the definition of the dreaded “fine” episode, which is even more frustrating because it really could have been great. Kirk is informed that an old nemesis, Kodos the Executioner, is alive and well, hiding out as an actor in a Shakespeare troupe. Kodos is guilty of horrific utilitarian crimes, showing that in Trek’s future, utilitarianism’s true colors have been revealed and it has finally been outlawed. Kirk is one of the only survivors of Kodos’ epithetic executions, and is therefore one of the only living people who knows what the man looks like. As the few other witnesses begin to die off, Kirk must decide if he can act without evidence or indeed if the man is even Kodos.

That is an amazing premise. Not only that, they came up with a great ending for it that powerfully expresses the episode’s themes. They could have done really insightful examination of the burden of evidence in a utopian society, the nature of guilt, or even a considered take on the value of revenge. But they don’t. They don’t do any of that. Instead, Kirk receives an overwhelming amount of evidence that the guy is Kodos almost immediately, but still refuses to believe it for some absolutely unfathomable reason. This then continues for a half an hour until the episode ends. It’s a doozy of an ending, but it really can’t make up for 75% of the episode being pointless plot meandering. If they had actually had points on both sides of the issue, that would be one thing, but it’s just overwhelming evidence against the guy for the entire runtime, making Kirk look like an idiot for not acting sooner. Really, almost everyone looks dumb in this one. Deaths (and near deaths) could have been prevented if anyone in this episode had been reasonable.

I really consider this one of the great lost opportunities of Original Series Trek. Watching this episode, it’s easy to see how it could be fixed into something amazing. Have the debate over whether or not the man is actually Kodos be more engaging, actually foreshadow the ending in an interesting way, just generally include more moral nuance. There’s definitely enough here that Trek fans are going to find something to enjoy. The ending is really powerful when it reveals what’s actually going on, and Spock gets some good moments to use logic (that Kirk just ignores, but that’s beside the point). For non-fans, it’s probably a skip, just because of the amount of wasted time the episode uses on repeating itself and idling around.

The Score: