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The Enterprise has been called off-course by Kirk's friend, Dr. Thomas Leighton, who claims to have discovered some type of artificial food source that could end famine. However, this turns out to be untrue: there is no food source. Leighton wanted Kirk to view and meet Anton Karidian, the leader of a Shakespearean acting troupe that is visiting Leighton's planet. Leighton claims that Karidian is Kodos the Executioner.
"Kodos the Executioner" is certainly a hyperbolic name, but it seems that he earned it. Twenty years ago on the colony Tarsus IV, Kodos was governor of the colony when a blight caused a severe food shortage. There were about 8000 members of the colony, and with no help in sight, people were surely going to die of starvation. Kodos declared martial law and then began sorting the colonists into two parties: those who would live, and those who would be executed so the others could live. According to Spock later in the episode, Kodos had some eugenics plan in mind during the sorting, although honestly this is sort of beside the fact. By the time help arrived at the colony, the 4000 people were dead, and Kodos was also apparently dead, although his body was not confirmed - a burned body was found. It's not really even clear whether the help arrived in time that all the colonists could have survived, or whether the survivors did only make it because the others had been killed. Again, this is sort of a moot point.
The more important point is that after the whole event, only nine living witnesses had seen Kodos in person. Three of them are Leighton, Kirk, and Lieutenant Kevin Riley on the Enterprise. It seems that Kodos didn't just kill people, either, since half of Leighton's face is hidden by a cover, and it's implied that whatever happened to his face was due to the events initiated by Kodos.
Now, Leighton has taken Kirk to a performance of MacBeth in order to see Kodos for himself. Kirk believes the stated history: that Kodos is dead. He shrugs off Leighton's arguments. The viewer gets the feeling that Kirk doesn't want to open old wounds.
But, Kirk is intrigued enough to attend the cocktail party Leighton and wife are hosting for the troupe of actors. Karidian doesn't show up, but his beautiful, 19-year-old daughter, Lenore, does. Kirk flirts with her and takes her on a presumably romantic walk outside - where they discover Leighton's body. He has been murdered (and we never learn the cause of death).
Now Kirk has become suspicious. He does some digging into Karidian's background. He discovers that Karidian has no records prior to Kodos's alleged death. He compares a picture of a young Kodos to an old Karidian, and they are certainly very similar, but not a certain match. Kirk arranges to transport Karidian's troupe on the Enterprise to their next engagement. In return for this favor, the troupe will put on a performance for the crew.
Spock has noticed that Kirk is behaving oddly, in particular delaying their mission to transport the acting troupe and then sending Riley back down to engineering. (Kirk intended this to protect Riley, but everyone views it as a demotion.) He has done his own investigation and rapidly came to the same conclusion as Kirk: Karidian is probably Kodos. In addition, Spock has discovered that the other eyewitnesses also died under suspicious circumstances, and when the Karidian troupe was nearby. Spock discusses this with McCoy, who is not very helpful, but he serves as a sounding board.
While Riley is in engineering, his food is poisoned. His distress is discovered immediately only by luck, so he will survive. Spock uses this incident as sufficient reason to confront Kirk with what he knows. Kirk is upset at bringing his "personal" business in front of others, but Spock is right - his actions are affecting the crew and the mission. Spock is also right to be concerned that Kirk is next on the hit list. In short order, they hear a phaser on overload hidden in Kirk's quarters. They find it and get it off the ship just in time.
This brings things to a head for Kirk, and he goes to Karidian's quarters to confront him. In an interesting choice for this episode, we haven't even seen Karidian in person until this point - he had one on-stage scene at the beginning of the episode. Kirk wastes no time in accusing Karidian of being Kodos. Karidian talks a lot, using a lot of euphemisms and leading statements, but admits nothing. Kirk has Karidian read a statement that Kodos made before executing people - a computer analysis should be able to match the voices.
At the end of this confrontation, Lenore appears, apparently having heard everything, and accuses Kirk of using her to get to Karidian. Kirk doesn't seem to regret that much.
Later, the computer analysis comparing the voices of Karidian and Kodos shows a match between the two voices, but not identical. Kirk can't in good conscience accuse someone (publicly, I guess) of being a mass murderer without better evidence. But he is about to find out the twist in this plot.
Riley has overheard McCoy talking about Karidian being Kodos (in the dumbest lack of security ever) and stolen a phaser, presumably to kill Karidian. Kirk tells security to find Riley, and immediately heads himself to the performance that the troupe is putting on now: Hamlet.
While Karidian is playing the ghost of Hamlet's father on stage, Riley sneaks in with the phaser. Kirk talks him down pretty quickly and sends him away. But Karidian had come off-stage and was upset by Riley's appearance. Lenore assures her father that he doesn't have to worry - she has "saved" him from those who might hurt him. Karidian realizes, as does Kirk nearby, that Lenore is the person who has been killing all of the eyewitnesses to the Tarsus massacre. He rails against her doing this.
Kirk approaches to take them both off-stage (stopping mid-performance, which Lenore can't believe), and Lenore grabs his phaser and runs away. She can't be thinking straight, because obviously there's no where for her to go. She's on the verge of a mental breakdown. She fires the phaser at Kirk, but Karidian moves in front to take the shot and dies. Lenore clearly has a complete mental break here, seeming not to believe that Karidian is dead.
In the last scene, McCoy says that Lenore will be receiving the best (mental) treatment and that in fact, she doesn't even remember what happened and that her father is dead.
This is a very interesting, stylized episode. The Shakespeare scenes performed by the troupe are very minimalistic and stylistic, and the rest of the episode follows this sort of feeling. The dialog between the characters, in particular Kirk/Lenore, Karidian/Kirk, and Karidian/Lenore, is rather stilted and unnatural, but it works in the context of this episode. The plot of the episode is Shakespearean itself, with the horrible past dead performed, the perpetrator's guilt, and the burden it has put on his daughter.
For a first-time viewer, I think the twist of having Lenore be the person killing the eyewitness is set up well and not overly telegraphed. Lenore comes off as a rather empty-headed teenage performer, while Karidian is certainly mysterious, private, and apparently guilt-ridden.
I am very curious about Lenore's origins. I believe that we are told that she's nineteen. That means that she was born after the massacre by Kodos. (That makes sense - surely it would have been remembered by the eyewitnesses and official accounts if Kodos had a daughter that survived him.) But it does mean that she was born quite soon after the massacre. Who was her mother? Did the mother know who Karidian really was? What happened to the mother? How did Lenore figure out that Karidian was Kodos? This seems like a very unlikely thing for her to discover on her own. Perhaps the first eyewitness that she killed said something more publicly, and that led her to put two and two together?
Also related to the Tarsus IV massacre: what happened to Kirk there? Apparently he was one of the colonists selected to survive. Did he have any relatives or friends there who were massacred? How old was he then? About twenty? Was this before or after he joined Starfleet? Why was he even there - later history says he was born in Iowa. Perhaps this is just inconsistency in his history, since the series is young. While a massacre is obviously a very bad thing, I like the depth that this occurrence gives to the world of TOS. Everything is not totally peachy, and exploration of new planets is dangerous. There are still horrible situations that occur that bring out the worst in people. And as McCoy did discuss with Spock, the situation on Tarsus IV was really a no-win situation. I was thinking about it on my own after this viewing of the episode, and if the colony really was that short on food, then certainly anarchy would have taken over shortly and only those willing to do violence probably would have survived. I can't justify Kodos's arbitrariness, but it's hard to see a "good" solution.
The pace of the episode was very deliberate and drawn-out. The episode indulged in a number of flirtatious scenes between Kirk and Lenore that illustrated how Kirk could become such a ladies' man. For example, when Lenore commented about the soft lighting on the observation deck, Kirk responded, "If I had arranged the soft lighting, I would have also arranged for music and flowers." Always with his trademark seductive smile and bedroom eyes.
Lenore was clearly no stranger to flirting and enjoyed the conversational double-entendres. Probably her best line was also on the observation deck, with "All this power, surging and throbbing, yet under control. Are you like that, Captain?"
Throughout the episode, the dialog crackled, either with desire, or with guilt, or with grief. After Kirk confronted Karidian for the first time and Lenore caught him out, Kirk tells her that if Karidian is not Kodos, then "no harm done". Lenore flings at him, "Who is to say what hurt was done?" Kirk replies, "Who do I have to be?" Kirk knows that there is not good resolution to the whole situation. If Karidian is Kodos, then revealing it now may bring some closure and justice to the families of the massacred, but it may also just open a lot of old wounds. And it would ruin Lenore's life. So long after the fact, how should justice be served? We see these issues in contemporary society with former dictators and war criminals being brought to trial. It seems like a necessary thing to do, but it is rarely black-and-white.
Now to look at some of the details of the episode. While the staging and dialog of the episode is pretty timeless, some of the technical details are pretty dated. Almost every time I watch this episode, I have to chuckle about Riley being poisoned by someone using a plastic spray bottle. What would a futuristic poison device look like? I don't know, but this seems so low tech.
It also borders on absurd that McCoy would suggest that because the poison (a lubricant) looks like milk, someone might have carelessly confused them. Really? They are storing the milk and the lubricant in the same place, so you might pick up the wrong one?
The computer analysis is also quite dated. The computer can call up all of this wonderful information, but seems quite limited in what it can display. And in this episode it seem very limited in analytical ability - Kirk doesn't even ask it to analyze the photos of Karidian and Kodos - he just looks at them himself. The only "hard" evidence, so to speak, that they can come up with is the voiceprint analysis. Today, we have to wonder why there wasn't any DNA from the alleged body of Kodos to compare to Karidian. Or any other similar forensic evidence. Perhaps it's just as well - the meat of the episode was the moral quandry Kirk had about possibly reveal Kodos, and the similar angst of Karidian and Lenore. A technological "answer" would have negated the much more interesting human angle.
avondale@astro.umd.edu