Synopsis: Captain Kirk is tried for negligently causing the death of a crew member.
This episode can be seen as the conflict between Logos and Eros being physically manifested in the pitting of Captain James T. Kirk versus the Enterprise’s computer. Man against machine.
Kirk maintains throughout “Court Martial” that in an emergency situation he did exactly what was required of him to do in the order that he was required to do it in. However, a visual log from the Enterprise’s computer shows him jettisoning a pod containing Record’s Officer Lt. Commander Benjamin Finney when an emergency was not yet in existence. This would seem to be unquestionable evidence of Kirk’s negligence, unless of course the computer could be wrong. That this possibility should be explored is neatly argued by Samuel T. Cogley, Kirk’s attorney, when he requests that the trial be moved to the Enterprise in order to question her computer, Kirk’s accuser: “You have brought us down to the level of the machine. Indeed you have elevated that machine above us. I ask that my motion be granted, and more than that gentlemen, in the name of humanity, fading in the shadow of the machine, I demand it.”
It is also interesting that in Mr. Spock’s testimony at the court martial trial he states that the log is wrong. When asked if that is just speculation on his part, Spock answers: “I am half Vulcanian – Vulcanians do not speculate. I speak out of pure logic. It is impossible for Captain Kirk to act out of panic or malice. It is not his nature.” Yet logic, or Logos, alone does not allow him to account for this. It is not until in a passing remark from Kirk, that maybe he will be able to beat his next captain at chess, that Spock has an insight into how to test the computer’s memory banks. Spock is able to beat the computer at chess, which he personally programmed with his own knowledge. Therefore, he proves that it has been reprogrammed, and eventually this leads to the discovery that Finney is not dead. It is that flash of insight – the Eros – that allowed Spock to make the connection. Did this come from his submerged human half? This is at least the second time that a leap of Eros has allowed Spock to save the day. The other I can think of off the top of my head was in “The Galileo Seven,” when he jettisoned the fuel and lit it on fire as a desperate SOS signal. In many ways as the series progresses, the character of Spock presents certain non-human gifts that allowed the crew of the Enterprise to triumph in dire circumstances – the Vulcan neck pinch, the Vulcan mind-meld, Spock’s computer like ability to remember and store data. But is this ability to access his human half perhaps his greatest gift?
Original post created 25 January 2021
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