"Errand of Mercy" - Season 1, Episode 26
An "Arena" redux proves more successful than its inspiration.
At some point before landing on Organia, Spock calls the planet “A laboratory specimen of an arrested culture.” Kirk agrees. They are a stagnant and unambitious people. This idea has come up a few times across multiple episodes. “Return of the Archons” introduced the concept of “The Prime Directive,” a standing Starfleet order that prohibits interference with the natural course of a civilization’s development, so long as they are living and growing. “Stagnant” cultures, however, are ripe for uplifting. “This Side of Paradise” saw Kirk raise moral, rather than legal, objections to a culture’s lack of “ambition.” The plants there kept the population happy and healthy, but content. So content that they wanted for nothing more. So healthy that they saw no need to bend nature to their will. As noted in the piece there, the episode is rather ambiguous about Kirk’s attitude; they end the paradise and make Spock miserable by doing so. If “This Side of Paradise” threw the ball in the air, “Errand of Mercy” emphatically slams it down, framing the Enterprise crew as overconfident meddlers who operate convinced of their own superiority. It’s an act of mercy to serve someone humble pie.
The episode begins with a rather dramatic table setting: the Federation and Klingon Empire are at war. This is the first mention of the Klingons, who Kirk characterizes them as a military dictatorship running a slave economy. It’s unpleasant and Kirk lays the blame for the breakdown solely at the Klingons’ feet. The crew have been ordered to Organia, an independent planet near the border between Federation and Klingon Space, in order to secure it as a potential port and strategic staging point.
Kirk and Spock arrive on Organia and are greeted by Ayelborne, leader of the Organians. Ayelborne was played by John Abbott, an English actor primarily known for his work in Shakespearean companies on stage but who spent most of his later career appearing in guest spots much like this, including multiple episodes of Perry Mason.
The Organians resemble humans circa 1200 A.D., with a castle, town, and peasant-style clothing. They are entirely pacifistic, devoted to nonviolence, and believe strongly that things will simply work out. They decline the Enterprise’s offer of protection and an alliance with the Federation despite Kirk’s pleading that the Klingons will make slaves of them all. When the Klingons finally do appear, the Enterprise is forced to retreat to find reinforcements, leaving Kirk and Spock stranded as the planet comes under occupation.
The face of the occupation is Commander Kor, a kind of warrior-poet Klingon general who enjoys the finer things in life, including blind obedience. Kirk and Spock are at first able to assume false identities and perform some light terrorism to disrupt Klingon operations, but are ultimately given up to Kor by Ayelborne, the leader of the Organians, who cannot abide their violent resistance. Kor takes a liking to Kirk and the chemistry is reciprocal, their polite back and forth paired with mutual venomous glares gives the episode some of its most engaging scenes. But it’s not long before Ayelborne frees the two, for reasons and with methods that he refuses to elaborate on. The Klingons kill two hundred Organians in response; Ayelborne is hardly bothered. Everything, he says, will work out.
Kirk and Spock discuss the occupation with the Klingon General Kor, played by John Colicos. Even modern Klingon’s owe much of their look to Colicos, who suggested the mustache, leathery skin, and overall “Genghis Khan” styling. Colicos would later reprise his role as Kor on Deep Space Nine nearly 30 years later.
Eventually, the Enterprise returns and readies for battle with the Klingons above the planet’s surface. Kirk and Spock rush to capture Kor to attempt to cut off the Klingons’ leadership and rally the Organians into resistance. Their capture is successful, but the second half finally pushes Ayelborne over the edge. He and the rest of the Organian council barge in and demand that the fighting cease. And it does.
The Organians give up the ghost, namely that they’re closer to ghosts than anything else. They’re nearly all-powerful energy beings, evolved beyond the need or use of physical bodies, merely projecting their forms to make everyone feel comfortable. They had hoped the conflict would merely resolve itself but they've grown impatient and the threat of violence too great. Weapons do not work anymore, all systems are frozen, and it will stay that way until hostilities end. The Organians, still relatively annoyed, state that the two sides will one day be great allies, foreshadowing The Next Generation almost twenty years ahead.
You may notice that this ending is almost an exact copy of “Arena,” although there the Metrons were the all-powerful energy beings stepping in to resolve a conflict between the “lower species.” But where the Metrons were annoying hypocrites who forced a cage match to resolve civilizational struggle, the Organians come off as rightful annoyed parents in a room full of children.
Important to the shift is Kirk’s reaction. In “Arena,” Kirk spares his opponent in an act of understanding mercy, something the Metrons did not even consider possible. The “enlightened” beings came off as petty and ambivalent, above violence but forcing those below them to indulge in it. But here, Kirk charges ahead with his orders for war. At the end, he tells Spock that he feels “embarrassed.” By letting the protagonist come down clearly on the wrong side, and to draw such explicit personality parallels between him and his enemy, the lesson at the end hits a lot harder. The Organians have, by that point, spent the entire episode trying to talk the two sides out of fighting. Only after the rejection of all their lessons and entreaties do they step in, pull the kids apart, and tell them to stop hitting their brother.
The Organians reveal their true forms. Trek has a certain preoccupation with “energy beings,” as they’ve featured in “Charlie X,” “Arena,” and now here. How many gods can one universe have running around?
Kirk thus comes off as arrogant in two ways. For one, he blindly charged into violent confrontation when a peaceful solution was possible. For another, he assumed that the Organians were a stagnant culture who needed to be uplifted rather than a culture that had something to teach him. This assumption was based explicitly on appearances. Spock scans the planet before hand:
SPOCK: A very peaceful, friendly people living on a primitive level. Little of intrinsic value. Approximately Class D minus on the Richter’s scale of cultures.
KIRK: Another Armenia, Belgium.
SPOCK: Sir?
KIRK: The weak innocents who always seem to be located on the natural invasion routes.
The Armenians, of course, have been victims of an attempted genocide by the Ottoman Empire, an event that modern day Turkey still refuses to recognize. But to Kirk, these are people to be instructed, saved, and utilized rather than heard. After all, they’re low on the “scale of cultures.”
When paired with “The Return of the Archons,” and “This Side of Paradise,” “Errand of Mercy” completes a three episode cycle of Star Trek's first season that all examine the arrogance inherent in its premise. “This Side of Paradise” is the most effective of these due to the strong emotional anchor it gets from Spock’s brief romance, but “Errand of Mercy” is not far behind due to the unflinching eye it takes towards our protagonists instincts, instincts that we’ve seen acted upon time and time again throughout the show. At no point in this does Kirk hesitate, the episode’s framing even goes out of its way to portray him as a fearless resistance leader, the one man willing to stand up to the brutality of the Klingons. But a shift happens once he and Kor sit down to discuss things as equals, both exhibit the genteel affect oft lauded in hagiographic stories of old Civil War generals, but neither gives an inch on the war itself. They employ the same logic, logic that demanded the Federation rush to secure a neutral planet as one of its first actions in the war, logic that compelled the conclusion that a simple looking society was powerless and dumb too. The kind of logic that makes a “scale of cultures” in the first place.
In “Arena” Kirk demonstrates a capacity for mercy that shocks the Metrons into bemusement, at most. But here, the eponymous “Errand of Mercy” is not Kirk’s trip to Organia. It’s instead he and his enemies who require mercy, the mercy of a parent to forgive a feud. Even in the 2100s, the kids just don’t know any better.
Stray Thoughts
Spock and Kirk are basically the only two main characters to appear in this episode, and that’s about the smallest the cast can get and still be compelling. Nimoy and Shatner are great here, with some fun banter about their odds of making it through and some truly ridiculous costumes to add some spice.
This is the first appearance of the Klingons. They look much different here than they do later on, lacking the forehead ridges and language that have since come to define them. Almost all of those differences can be accounted for by the limited budget of The Original Series compared to the later shows, but it was fun to read the back-filled lore for why these Klingons look different.
The answer appears to be a viral pandemic of human features caused by a failed super-soldier program. Hate when that happens.
At one point, Kor describes the distinction between the Federation and the Klingon Empire as “minor ideological differences.” One owns slaves and the other doesn’t!
As Kirk goes to beam down, he explicitly leaves Sulu in charge of the Enterprise, which I believe marks the first time the Enterprise Acting Captain has not been a white man.
Photo Credits
Spock and Kirk ponder a grenade:
Kirk and Spock greeted: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708429/
Kirk and Spock talk with Kor: https://strekonline.com/2341/star-trek-the-original-series/season-1-tos/1-26-errand-of-mercy
Organians as energy: https://www.tor.com/2015/09/15/star-trek-the-original-series-rewatch-errand-of-mercy/