The Return of the Archons by: Boris Sobelman from a story by: Gene Roddenberry and directed by: Joseph Pevney

 

“The Return of the Archons” is written by Boris Sobelman, from a story by Gene Roddenberry, and is directed by Joseph Pevney.  It was filmed under production code 22, was the 21^st episode of Star Trek Season 1, and was broadcast on February 9, 1967.

 

Up front I need to be honest about this episode, this was a very difficult episode for me to get into and it’s because it feels very much at odds with what Star Trek is in a lot of ways.  There is a brilliant piece of speculative fiction here devaluing extreme conformity, but this is an episode that is very confused about how it wants to present these ideas.  Watching it in 2023 rips it from the very important context of early 1967, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War.  This is a time where American propaganda against communism was at an all time high while the anti-war movement was on the rise.  “The Return of the Archons” as an episode fits almost perfectly in stoking fears about communism as well as the fear of conformity that was perceived to have come with it.  This conformity is generally seen as an extension of collectivism, especially with ideas of people working together for the good of the society against the individualism of the American Dream.  It’s an episode about a planet where the people all share a gestalt consciousness controlled by Landru, with the Festival of Red Hour sending the young into a violent and sexual frenzy on the streets.  The computer has to be stopped by a very small resistance of three people, all older gentlemen who are ineffective against the strong forces of an ever expanding hive mind.  This, combined with our protagonist’s almost immediately being driven to take down the computer by any means necessary, reveals much about Gene Roddenberry’s ideas behind the episode.

 

Sobelman’s script and Roddenberry’s ideas are interesting in that this is the first time Star Trek mentions the Prime Directive, stating that the Enterprise crew are not to interfere in the development of other planets with some explicit exceptions.  The way “The Return of the Archons” plays it feels like there is an attempt to satirize American exceptionalism and interference with mention made of the crew of the Archon, a starship that disappeared a century ago and left the computer in charge of this planet.  This could have made “The Return of the Archons” great at exploring the effects of American imperialism and colonialism, but instead it is an episode that almost runs out of time showing the imagery of this society instead of contemplating where Starfleet, and by extension America, has made its mistakes.  The episode also just has some structural problems since all of the material towards this particular reading is done in very quick exposition while the rest of the episode fits very much into the ideas of American exceptionalism and freedom.  Joseph Pevney directs, this being his second episode for the series, and his direction plus the costumes of the episode is something incredibly positive.  Since the society on the surface has an 1800s Earth culture, period costumes are used and it makes the episode visually stand out in a very interesting way.  The action itself is shot very well, despite almost getting in the way of the story.  The episode starts in media res and there isn’t enough time devoted to really showing the audience how we got to that point.  George Takei and DeForest Kelley are the standouts here as they are made ‘of the Body’ in communion with the computer leaving these dopey performances.    The climax of Kirk essentially contradicting the computer into suicide is also a nice touch, but the characterization of Kirk is especially 1960s American.

 

Overall, “The Return of the Archons” while not a bad episode and well-remembered for its iconic imagery (it was an inspiration for The Purge of all things) is an episode with a very many problems, especially in its messaging being very out of line with the rest of Star Trek in a lot of ways has set out to do.  It especially feels weird to be an idea from Gene Roddenberry too.  Structurally there are pacing issues and almost not enough time to explore ideas that would make the messaging far more nuanced than the very simple ideas against conformity and collectivism without examining in any real depth as to why these things could be wrong (the argument presented is a loss of free will but doesn’t factor human empathy into the equation).  The performances, direction, and costumes all go a long way to make it watchable and it isn’t bad per say but it is very messy.  5/10.