I was making a list with my favorite Star Trek episodes so far, but now I've seen so many I've loved it became irrelevant. I'm becoming increasingly in love with this series.
What the hell was this?
Pretty corny with the Shakespeare, almost embarrassingly so.
The story ain't even bad. Kirk is painful to watch, though. I don't blame the actor, but does he always needs to womanize? Does Kirk always needs to be that stubborn? Not telling his crew what's going on? He's a liability to the ship. And his idea of hands-on justice isn't representative for a future justice system I hope. Arrest him, let the authorities and justice decide his faith.
And do women always need to signal their sexual desire in such an apparent way? And do women always need to resemble Playboy bunnies? And do they always need to be emotion-driven and crazy insane (while men are composed and reasonable)? I mean, it's the 60's and standards were different but this show was never a champion of women's rights ....
another member of the 'i'm a girl and i'm insane' cinematic universe
STAR TREK: THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KING
WRITING: 80
ACTING: 85
LOOK: 60
SOUND: 60
FEEL: 85
NOVELTY: 90
ENJOYMENT: 85
RE-WATCHABILITY: 80
INTRIGUE: 90
EXPECTATIONS: 90
Quirky episodes like this one, whether good or bad, tend to stick with the fans for decades. This is Star Trek going Shakespearean, and it’s oddly fascinating and surprisingly natural. Star Trek doing Shakesopereand murder mystery is even better. I also love the way Kirk goes all out suave lover boy, while Spock starts investigating Kirk’s past actions. Even though the story is tense, it allows for some fine character moments and never turns theatrical. It turns a bit overly dramatic towards the end though.
81% = :white_check_mark:
This one's for those of us who can't get enough Shakespeare with our Star Trek. This is one of those episodes that seems like they wrote the story based on the props and costumes they had lying around. It certainly gave the impression that this was a budget saving episode. Even with the great Gerd Oswald directing, this one is as dull as a rubber ball. The casting was way off. Never once did the actor playing Kodos (the mass killer) relay that his character was capable of such a thing.
At it's core a good mystery with an unexpected twist at the end. A little bit high on pheromones at the beginning.
But what I find a little bit disturbing is that Kirk is looking for proof that it is Kodos, not to bring him to justice but to decide whether to kill him or not. There never really is talk about turning Karridian over and Kirk even tells his daugther that if he is Kodos he gave him more mercy then he deserves.
Really good performances again by the guest stars.
A good episode, but something felt off. Having Lenore kill people to protect her father just doesn't seem to fit. There had to be another way to resolve this episode.
Star Trek meets Shakespeare? Sounds like an odd mix, but it works very well.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParent2017-01-17T00:11:37Z
8.2/10. Before Star Trek went into darkness, it went into noir. As much as the show has been concerned with mysteries throughout its run, “Conscience of the King” feels the most like something akin to The Maltese Falcon, with a femme fatale, a hardboiled detective, and a question that needs to be answered while deadly games are afoot. But it’s also strange watching this episode so soon after seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest (and not just because of the Shakespeare reference) as the episode has a Hitchcockian sense of double-identities and a man falling in love with a woman who’s trying to deceive him (and vice versa).
Those noir-ish qualities give “Conscience of the King” a unique feel. The dialogue gets a little too gooey or grandiose at times (especially when Kirk and Lenore are making goo-goo eyes at one another), but the way this one turns into a potboiler, where affection is mixed with a mystery grounded in atrocity, serves it well.
The height of these influences comes in the scene with the attempt on Crewman O’Reilly’s life. The contrast of beauty and murder, as Uhura sings while O’Reilly is poisoned, offers a stylistic flourish, and the use of shadow, and the direction and framing of the moment make it stand out as one of the finest sequences in the show thus far. What's more, we get some more great Spock/Bones interactions as the two join the attempt to solve the mystery, lending to the themes of questioning how to command at play.
There’s also a notable headiness and political commentary going on. The first mention of Kodos (which is a bit of a laugh for Simpsons fans) as a war criminal possibly hiding out in this theater troupe calls to mind rumors of Hitler and other Nazis escaping to South America, at a time when World War II and its horrors had happened barely a generation ago. To play around in this space in a sci-fi setting is interesting, and the episode addresses the thorny issues of justice and vengeance through this lens.
But it also gets at some interesting thematic points about difficult situations. The Hitler comparisons go further when it’s revealed that despite the fact that he had 4,000 people executed, in a way that may have included his own theories of eugenics, he at least claims only to have done it to save 4,000 more who might not have lived had the supply ships arrived later than they did, and he seems haunted by the guilt. There is a moral gray area that Star Trek doesn’t always address at play here, with the show evincing an odd sympathy for a man dubbed “the executioner.”
There is a back and forth between him and Kirk that, while getting a little (intentionally) theatrical, delves into recurring motifs over life and death vs. people as machines that has depth to it.
It also speaks to the other clear and obvious influence here – Shakespeare. It’s not exactly subtle, having a man who does terrible things and then feels stained by his actions playing Macbeth, nor is it especially understated to have a young man attempt to avenge (and a young woman defend) her parents during a staging of Hamlet, but it works. Sure, Karidian and Lenore go overboard at times, but their style is reminiscent of the stage, so again, it fits what the show is going for. And the nature of rulers, of what it means to make those life and death decisions, not to mention hidden identities, were very much the purview of the Bard.
What’s more, the episode’s final twist, that it is Lenore who was taking out the witnesses of her father’s harsh actions, not Karidian himself, is a good one. The fact that Karidian saw his daguther as pure and unsullied by his regretful choices that he would dive in front of Kirk to shield him from a phaser blast, dying in the process, is appropriately poetic, tragic, and operatic an end to this outsized story.
Overall, it’s one of the more ambitious episodes of the show in its early going, taking stylistic risks that we haven’t seen in the past. In some places, particularly the dialogue, the show’s reach exceeds its grasp, but it still stands out as one of the smarter, deeper, and more unique episodes of Star Trek in its first season.