The Return of the Archons

Plot

On stardate 3156.2, the Federation starship USS Enterprise, under the command of Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), arrives at the planet Beta III in the C-111 system where the USS Archon was reported lost nearly 100 years earlier. Lt. Sulu (George Takei) is the only member of the landing party who beams up from the planet's surface, and exhibits strange behavior. Kirk beams down with another party to investigate. They find the inhabitants living in a static, 19th-century Earth-style culture, with little or no individual expression or creativity. The entire culture is ruled over by cloaked and cowled "Lawgivers", controlled by a reclusive dictator known as Landru (Charles Macaulay). The landing party has arrived at the start of "Festival", a period of violence, destruction, and sexual aggressiveness which apparently is the only time Landru does not exercise control over the Betan populace.

Kirk's landing party seeks shelter from the mob at a boarding house owned by Reger (Harry Townes), A friend of Reger's suspects that the visitors are "not of the Body" (the whole of Betan society), and summons Lawgivers. The Lawgivers kill Reger's friend, Tamar (Jon Lormer), for resisting the "will of Landru". When the landing party refuses to do as the Lawgivers say, the Lawgivers become immobile and Reger leads the Enterprise landing team to a hiding place. Reger reveals that Landru "pulled the Archons down from the skies". Contacting the ship, Kirk learns that heat beams from the planet are attacking the Enterprise, which must use all its power for its shields. Its orbit is deteriorating and it will crash in 12 hours unless the beams are turned off.

A projection of Landru appears in the hiding place, and Kirk and his team are rendered unconscious by ultrasonic waves and captured. The landing party is imprisoned in a dungeon, and Dr. Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley) is "absorbed into the Body" and placed under Landru's mental control. Kirk is taken to a chamber full of high technology, where he is to be "absorbed". But Marplon (Torin Thatcher), one of the priests of Landru who is immune to Landru's control, rescues him and Spock (Leonard Nimoy). Returning to the dungeon, Reger and Marplon tell how Landru saved their society from war and anarchy 6,000 years ago and reduced the planet's technology to a simpler level.

McCoy summons the Lawgivers to "absorb" Kirk and Spock, who subdue them and don their robes. Marplon takes Kirk and Spock to the Hall of Audiences, where priests commune with Landru. A projection of Landru appears and threatens Kirk, Spock, and all Betans who saw the landing party with death. Kirk and Spock use their phasers to blast through the wall and expose the truth: the reclusive Landru is actually a computer and Landru who built the machine had died 6,000 years ago. The computer neutralizes their phasers. Kirk argues with the machine, telling it that it has destroyed the creativity of the people—killing "the Body". Concluding that the computer's prime directive is to destroy evil, Kirk forces the computer to self-destruct, freeing the people of Beta III.

The heat beams stop, and the Enterprise is saved. Kirk agrees to leave Federation advisors and educators on the planet to help the civilization advance, free of Landru's dominance.

Reception

Eric Greene observes that "Return of the Archons" is the first time Star Trek attempted to deal with issues of war and peace raised by the Vietnam War, and established a template that would be used in a number of subsequent episodes such as "A Taste of Armageddon", "This Side of Paradise", and "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky". The Federation's moral superiority is exhibited through its emphasis on individual freedom, progress, and resort to violence only in self-defense, while the Betan society is criticized for its state control, stagnation, and reliance on aggression. Greene argues that these episodes prefigure the Borg collective, a far more overt totalitarian (even Soviet) metaphor in the series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Scholar M. Keith Booker notes that the episode presents Kirk "at his most American", valuing struggle against obstacles as the highest virtue and denouncing utopia (equated with communism) as dehumanizing.

Scholars Michael A. Burstein and John Kenneth Muir note that the plot of "The Return of the Archons" (in which Kirk and company discover a stagnant society worshipping a god-like being whom Kirk destroys with human illogic) became something of a cliché among fans in the decades after the series ended for being a rather common plot device. Burstein criticizes the episode for attacking organized religion, which it presented as suppressing freedom and creativity. But religious scholar Michael Anthony Corey praises the episode for realizing that the elimination of a huge number of moral evils can occur only by causing a single, massive moral evil (the loss of free will). Corey points out that the episode seems to draw heavily on German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz's "Principle of Radical Optimism", which concludes that ours is the best of all possible worlds because it contains the conditions for human existence (and not because it has a greater or lesser number of moral evils).

Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club gave the episode a "B" rating, describing the episode as having a "loose, unpolished feeling" and lacking "the force of the series' best storylines", but praised the story's ambition.

"Return of the Archons" is one of actor Ben Stiller's favorite episodes of Star Trek. "Red Hour", the time of day when the "Festival" begins, is the name of his production company.