History Recap / StarTrekS1E21TheReturnOfTheArchons

Down on the planet of Beta III, Sulu and a RedShirt are being hounded by a group of brown-cloaked figures wielding the world's longest Swiss Roll(TM); the RedShirt runs off and disappears, while Sulu is beamed aboard the ''Enterprise'', but not before being touched by the Swiss Roll, converting him into a hippie ditz. Concerned by this turn of events, Kirk takes a landing party down to scope things out.

[floatboxright:
Series:Series/{{Star Trek The Original Series}}\\
Episode: Season 1, Episode 21\\
Title:"The Return Of The Archons"\\
Previous: Court Martial\\
Next: Space Seed\\
Recapper: Synjo Deonecros]

* AIIsACrapshoot: Landru. At least it had good intentions.

* LaResistance: Reger and his buddies are a pretty pathetic version of this.

** What is the point of the violent "Festival"? The novelization offers the explanation that it's how the computer keeps the population from growing.

* AbsurdlyDedicatedWorker: Landru guards his planet long after its usefulness has ceased.
* AlienNonInterferenceClause: This is the first episode of the series to mention the Prime Directive. Kirk decides that it doesn't apply in this case because the society's natural development has already been interfered with. (It turns out that the society did this to itself, so does that still count as prior interference? Nobody questions it.)
* AIIsACrapshoot: Landru.
* BreakingSpeech: Kirk's LogicBomb on Landru could count as this.

* PlotHole: What is the point of the violent "Festival"? The novelization offers the explanation that it's how the computer keeps the population from growing.

* YouWillBeAssimilated: Even [=McCoy=] gets temporarily brainwashed.

* AlienNonInterferenceClause: This is the first episode of the series to mention the Prime Directive. Kirk decides that it doesn't apply in this case because the society's natural development has already been interfered with. (It turns out that the society did this to itself, so does that still count as prior interference? Nobody questions it... though it probably helps that he also cites that the interference has led to the society not developing)

What they find isn't promising; a giant LotusEaterMachine disguised as a 19th-century town, where every Victorian-clad citizen is nice and friendly and not at all a StepfordSmiler...until the evening falls, during which they, well...aren't. Nice, friendly, and a StepfordSmiler, I mean; for the entire night, everyone goes crazy and destructive, like the entire cast of ''Film/{{Equilibrium}}'' went off their Prozium at the same time and started going through the withdrawl symptom of violent mood swings. The away team finds shelter at a local boarding house run by a man named Roger, who grows interested in their lack of going nuts like the rest of the town and questions if they're "Archons", referring to the crew of the ship that the ''Enterprise'' came to the planet to find; Kirk refuses to say, thanks to that pesky [[AlienNonInterferenceClause Prime Directive]].

The next day, though, someone tips the Brown Cloaks off to the landing party, and attempts to "absorb" them into the LotusEaterMachine. Fortunately, Kirk's uncanny ability to LogicBomb any computer-like being saves the day, and they escape with Roger to a safer location...but not without picking up the Red Shirt, now a member of the machine, against Roger's warnings not to. Once out of danger, Roger explains the whole thing: he is a resistance fighter against the Brown Cloaks and their master, Landru, who controls the people via MindControl, and polices them with the Brown Cloaks; anyone out of its thrall is told YouWillBeAssimilated (so, nothing like the Borg, then), and are killed if they can't be. Even worse, Landru has the ability to pull entire starships out of the sky to assimilate its crew, which is what it's doing to the ''Enterprise'', currently (though with heat beams...yeah, major ArtisticLicensePhysics, there). Unfortunately, since the Red Shirt ''has'' been assimilated, Landru finds the group through him, and knocks them out in an attempt to capture and assimilate them.

The away team finds themselves deep in Landru's sanctuary, on call to be assimilated, and with no hope of escape now that the Brown Cloaks have adapted to Kirk's {{Logic Bomb}}s (again, no Borg similarities here). In a stroke of luck, though, it turns out the master assimilator is a member of Roger's underground, and manages to keep Kirk and Spock from being absorbed. After subduing their captors (why they didn't do that, before, is anyone's guess, as is why Landru bothered to bring them to his inner sanctum to assimilate them instead of having the Brown Cloaks touch them with their Swiss Rolls), Kirk has Roger and the assimilator take them to Landru...which turns out to be a giant computer (what else?).

* AlienNonInterferenceClause: This is the first episode of the series to mention the Prime Directive. Kirk decides that it doesn't apply in this case because the society's natural development has already been interfered with. (It turns out that the society did this to itself, so does that still count as prior interference? Nobody questions it.)

As it turns out, Landru was once a real person, a leader of the colony on the planet, who built the machine to help him keep the peace over the people; once Landru died, the computer took over his name, identity, and purpose, and went through a ZerothLawRebellion, force-assimilating people into the HiveMind in order to keep order. When the Archon crew came, it saw them as a threat to its perfect society, and assimilated them, just like it's trying to assimilate the crew of the ''Enterprise''. Unfortunately for it, Kirk regains his LogicBomb mojo and makes it explode by forcing it to realize it's harming the very people it sought to protect by stifling their free will and creativity (how {{Anvilicious}} of you). Having ruined yet another idyllic society, Kirk leaves the once-absorbed Red Shirt to guide the colony to a more "human" existence, and goes gallivanting off to a new adventure.

Down on the planet of Beta III, Sulu and a RedShirt are being hounded by a group of [[strike:[[BlackCloak Black]]]] brown-cloaked figures wielding the world's longest Swiss Roll(TM); the RedShirt runs off and disappears, while Sulu is beamed aboard the ''Enterprise'', but not before being touched by the Swiss Roll, converting him into a hippie ditz. Concerned by this turn of events, Kirk takes a landing party down to scope things out.

What they find isn't promising; a giant LotusEaterMachine disguised as a 19th-century town, where every Victorian-clad citizen is nice and friendly and not at all a StepfordSmiler...until the evening falls, during which they, well...aren't. Nice, friendly, and a StepfordSmiler, I mean; for the entire night, everyone goes crazy and destructive, like the entire cast of ''Film/{{Equilibrium}}'' went off their Prozium at the same time and started going through the withdrawl symptom of violent mood swings. The away team finds shelter at a local boarding house run by a man named Roger, who grows interested in their lack of going nuts like the rest of the town and questions if they're "Archons", referring to the crew of the ship that the ''Enterprise'' came to the planet to find; Kirk refuses to say, thanks to that pesky [[{{Alien Non-Interference Clause}} Prime Directive]].

The next day, though, someone tips the [[strike:Black]] Brown Cloaks off to the landing party, and attempts to "absorb" them into the LotusEaterMachine. Fortunately, Kirk's uncanny ability to LogicBomb any computer-like being saves the day, and they escape with Roger to a safer location...but not without picking up the Red Shirt, now a member of the machine, against Roger's warnings not to. Once out of danger, Roger explains the whole thing: he is a resistance fighter against the [[strike:Blasck]] Brown Cloaks and their master, Landru, who controls the people via MindControl, and polices them with the [[strike:Black]] Brown Cloaks; anyone out of its thrall is told YouWillBeAssimilated (so, nothing like the Borg, then), and are killed if they can't be. Even worse, Landru has the ability to pull entire starships out of the sky to assimilate its crew, which is what it's doing to the ''Enterprise'', currently (though with heat beams...yeah, major YouFailPhysicsForever, there). Unfortunately, since the Red Shirt ''has'' been assimilated, Landru finds the group through him, and knocks them out in an attempt to capture and assimilate them.

The away team finds themselves deep in Landru's sanctuary, on call to be assimilated, and with no hope of escape now that the [[strike:Black]] Brown Cloaks have adapted to Kirk's {{Logic Bomb}}s (again, no Borg similarities here). In a stroke of luck, though, it turns out the master assimilator is a member of Roger's underground, and manages to keep Kirk and Spock from being absorbed. After subduing their captors (why they didn't do that, before, is anyone's guess, as is why Landru bothered to bring them to his inner sanctum to assimilate them instead of having the [[strike:Black]] Brown Cloaks touch them with their Swiss Rolls), Kirk has Roger and the assimilator take them to Landru...which turns out to be a giant computer (what else?).

As it turns out, Landru was once a real person, a leader of the colony on the planet, who built the machine to help him keep the peace over the people; once Landru died, the computer took over his name, identity, and purpose, and went through a ZerothLawRebellion, force-assimilating people into the HiveMind in order to keep order. When the Archon crew came, it saw them as a threat to its perfect society, and assimilated them, just like it's trying to assimilate the crew of the ''Enterprise''. Unfortunately for it, Kirk regains his LogicBomb mojo and makes it explode by forcing it to realize it's harming the very people it sought to protect by stifling their free will and creativity (how {{Anvilicious}} of you). Having ruined yet another idyllic society, Kirk leaves the once-absorbed Red Shirt to guide the colony to a more "human" existence, Kirk goes gallivanting off to a new adventure.

!This episode contains the following tropes:

* TheMole: Awfully lucky that Marplon had such a high position of responsibility in the "body".
* PlotHole: What is the point of the "Festival?" The novelization actually fills this one in: it's how the computer keeps the population from growing.

* HilariousInHindsight: A regular twelve hour period of complete anarchy? [[Film/ThePurge Seems familiar.]]

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This episode contains the following tropes:
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* HilariousInHindsight: A regular twelve hour period of complete anarchy? [[ThePurge Seems familiar.]]

[[caption-width-right:300:Kirk and Spock blend in on Beta III.]]

The away team finds themselves deep in Landru's sanctuary, on call to be assimilated, and with no hope of escape now that the [[strike:Black]] Brown Cloaks have adapted to Kirk's LogicBombs (again, no Borg similarities here). In a stroke of luck, though, it turns out the master assimilator is a member of Roger's underground, and manages to keep Kirk and Spock from being absorbed. After subduing their captors (why they didn't do that, before, is anyone's guess, as is why Landru bothered to bring them to his inner sanctum to assimilate them instead of having the [[strike:Black]] Brown Cloaks touch them with their Swiss Rolls), Kirk has Roger and the assimilator take them to Landru...which turns out to be a giant computer (what else?).

What they find isn't promising; a giant LotusEaterMachine disguised as a 19th-century town, where every Victorian-clad citizen is nice and friendly and not at all a StepfordSmiler...until the evening falls, during which they, well...aren't. Nice, friendly, and a StepfordSmiler, I mean; for the entire night, everyone goes crazy and destructive, like the entire cast of {{Equilibrium}} went off their Prozium at the same time and started going through the withdrawl symptom of violent mood swings. The away team finds shelter at a local boarding house run by a man named Roger, who grows interested in their lack of going nuts like the rest of the town and questions if they're "Archons", referring to the crew of the ship that the ''Enterprise'' came to the planet to find; Kirk refuses to say, thanks to that pesky [[{{Alien Non-Interference Clause}} Prime Directive]].

* YouWillBeAssimilated: Even [=McCoy=] gets temporarily brainwashed.

As it turns out, Landru was once a real person, a leader of the colony on the planet, who built the machine to help him keep the peace over the people; once Landru died, the computer took over his name, identity, and purpose, and went through a ZerothLawRebellion, force-assimilating people into the HiveMind in order to keep order. When the Archon crew came, it saw them as a threat to its perfect society, and assimilated them, just like it's trying to assimilate the crew of the ''Enterprise''. Unfortunately for it, Kirk regains his LogicBomb mojo and makes it explode by forcing it to realize it's harming the very people it sought to protect by stifling their free will and creativity (how {{Anvilicious}} of you). Having ruined yet another idyllic society, Kirk leaves the once-absorbed Red Shirt to guide the colony to a more "human" existence, Kirk goes gallivanting off to a new adventure.

Series:Main/{{Star Trek The Original Series}}\\

What they find isn't promising; a giant LotusEaterMachine disguised as a 19th-century town, where every Victorian-clad citizen is nice and friendly and not at all a StepfordSmiler...until the evening falls, during which they, well...aren't. Nice, friendly, and a StepfordSmiler, I mean; for the entire night, everyone goes crazy and destructive, like the entire cast of {{Equilibrium}} went off their Prozium at the same time and started going through the withdrawl symptom of violent mood swings. The away team finds shelter at a local boarding house run by a man named Roger, who grows interested in their lack of going nuts like the rest of the town and questions if they're "Archons", referring to the crew of the ship that the ''Enterprise'' came to the planet to find; Kirk refuses to say, thanks to that pesky PrimeDirective.