Looking for the Archons

Obviously the "festival" -- the time when everybody went ape-shit -- was put in there so people would realize that things were not normal, not normal at all. People running around raping and burning and looting is a bad thing.

Would it work without all that silliness? I think so. I think just a bunch of people walking around with mindless looks on their faces would be pretty scary. People being afraid of these hooded characters, living in an ecstasy, no progress in six thousand years? Sounds like a pretty messed up place to me. Worthy of investigation, especially with the mystery of what happened to the Archons

What else could we take out? How about Landru? I think he's a nice prop thrown in there -- wise man from the ancient past who, through no malice of his own, created a system where people stay happy and fulfilled and society is stable. This is more of a critical plot element -- it gives the story it's human conflict. (After all, the main conflict is between Kirk and Landru's creation) But having a computer run things with mind control is still pretty scary. A story about computer controlling reality is basically a version of The Matrix, so it can work very well.

How far could I take this thing. How much could you remove and still have some degree or terror, conflict, and the opportunity for a good story?

How about taking the computer out? No, that wouldn't work. You have to have something that is bad. Wouldn't be much of a story about evil mind-control without the computer, would it?

Would it? I'm a good programmer. Could we take the computer from the central location and spread it around some? How about a network of computers all inside people's heads?

Yep, that still works. What we have here is The Borg. Lots of good story potential. The story has a centralized hive that controls all. I am still sticking to the idea that the trick is the mind control.

But is it? How about, instead of one hive mind controlling all, we have individual computers in each person's head doing whatever they want, providing them with anything they can imagine.

Ouch. Kind of hitting close to home, here.

But it works. This is a version of "Idiocracy" -- we advance technology so much we become immobile sensation-seeking tubs of lard. And I think it's still pretty scary. No progress in six thousand years, everybody with a blank stare, a constant state of rhapsody. No change. A stagnant society. You guys have heard me rant about this before, so I don't need to go on again. But it's a scary outcome.

Are we done? How about if we take away the computers completely? What if everybody was just extremely happy all the time, no crime or violence ever occurred, nothing changed, people had no new ideas, society actively punished any new thought.

Hmmmm. Yes, I think I could go that far. Perhaps not as a story about looking for lost Archons, but it could work. The story would begin with the crash-landing of the Archon's starship. You'd set it up as two societies living next to each other. One would be chaotic, messy, violent at times, dirty, and noisy. The other would be orderly, serene, peaceful, and idyllic. There would be immense tension. Those outside the body must be absorbed. Chaos and error cannot be tolerated. On the other side, those who are not progressing must be helped. Six Thousand years and folks still dying of things like smallpox? It hurts billions of future generations by not trying to make life better. We must help them, or at least talk to them and show them how things can be. Not the Borg, more like a version of the Stepford Wives. Or maybe one of those stories where the missionary doctor goes somewhere and doesn't fit in, but eventually makes a few converts and one of them goes to Harvard.

It'd work.

Which means, at it's heart this is a story about the conflict of cultures. We don't need Kirk and Spock and all that -- it's just the Landru guys and the Archons. One culture values peace, tranquility, non-violence, and stability -- above all else. The other culture? Well you can make a lot of arguments -- Landru says that he alone should be allowed to create. This seems to imply that the Star Trek folks are creative, therefore better, and the Landru guys are not creative, therefore worse. I don't buy that. It's true but incomplete. The Landru people are thinking independently and one assumes they create. Having a conversation, painting a building, getting a haircut -- even in stagnant civilizations there is creativity. I think this is just self-serving bullshit from the writers (sorry Gene!). If you have a job creating, creating must be the sole savior of the world. Everybody's job is always the key to civilization.

Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek and writer for this show, thought of creativity in extreme terms: the artist. But humans exhibit immense creativity in all kinds of ways, most of which are unpleasant. Everybody loves the painter, writer, or singer. Not many folks can find love for the torturer, human experimenter, or serial killer. Yet they are all forms of extreme creativity.

I think what the Star Trek guy's culture has that the other one doesn't is the empowering people as much as possible to be wrong, to make mistakes. You get mad and drive too fast. You have a fight with your spouse and they hit you. You come up with some half-brained idea for a search engine for the internet and it doesn't work. You decide to become a rock-painter for a living. Creative Chaos. Allowing folks to be as wrong as maximumly possible.

In controlled societies, there is a strong sense of what is wrong, either explicit or implicit. As our story fell apart, each of the above examples was about a world in which nobody deviated -- at all -- from a norm. The community did not allow anybody to be wrong.

Everybody is wrong -- until they are right. Every new idea and venture starts off as a crazy and bad idea. Until it works and changes the world. Every prophet, street philosopher, and malcontent preacher is a nutcase. Until one starts the Civil Rights Movement. Every crazy wacko in the world was wasting time and being a danger to themselves and others by trying to fly -- until the Wright Brothers flew. The guy down the street who gets angry all the time and looks like he might be dangerous is a menace to society -- until we need warriors.

99.99% of the time, these people are annoying, scary, chaotic, dangerous, not-serene, unhappy, pain in the asses. They're the exact opposite of the Landru folks. And they never accomplish anything except annoy folks

Except for that other .01% of the time. At those points society moves forward.

One final thought experiment.

Let's assume that the people have machines in each of their heads that can control their minds, but there is no external agent. They have complete control over the machine. Once a year, they all meet for a town meeting what the standards would be for programming. By debate and popular vote, they all set their machines to the same settings -- what they can do, what they can't do, what they can think about, what they can't think about. Technically there's still mind control, but it's being done by popular vote in a democracy.

Would you want to live there? Does it change your mind if there were only one reasonable rule, like not killing people. What if we started with one rule, and then each year added just one more rule, a rule that was guaranteed to prevent 99.99% of a bad thing and make people happier 99.99% of the time?

And the final kicker: are all peaceful cultures that shun change, have insanely blithely happy people, and are stagnant for thousands of years bad?

It's popular to picture aliens arriving as peaceful, wise, tranquil and kind souls. Any tendency towards violence or ugliness couldn't exist in an advanced species, we tell ourselves. Take a look at Kenau Reeves in The Day The Earth Stood Still as an example

But what if, a hundred years from now when the real aliens show up, they are a bunch of broken-down weirdos, violent and hateful, spiteful and petty? Smelly, get in fistfights all the time. Carry very dangerous weapons around as personal possessions. Keeping a strict military structure on their spaceships. Nice guys -- something like what a bunch of cowboys would be like from 1880. Not evil, but chaotically, unpredictably beautiful and truly diverse. What if we're the Landru guys, plugging ourselves into machines and then deciding what exactly what the machines can and can't do, valuing peace, stability, social harmony and happiness above all other things? Who's got the better culture?

Sci-Fi can be deeply meaningful, or just all so much bullshit. It all depends on how you consume it.