“Court Martial” is another one of those Star Trek episodes that is moderately successful at presenting an important commentary but is otherwise a victim of poor pacing and unfortunately contrived circumstances. In a sense, this episode is a precursor to TNG’s landmark episode “The Measure of a Man” but unlike TNG, this particular episode fails to plausibly establish the danger to its main character – in this case, Captain James T. Kirk. It certainly makes sense that there ought to be some accountability for the deaths of crewmembers. But let’s face it … crew members die in almost every episode. Why is this one the only one in which a formal investigation takes place? Imagine Kirk having to account for the deaths of every red shirt in the series. At any rate, as the title indicates, this is episode is a courtroom drama. But it just isn’t very good.

The setup for the court martial of Captain Kirk is based on the Enterprise’s recent encounter with an Ion storm. In the storm, one of the crew, Lt. Cmdr. Ben Finney is lost. During the “routine” accounting for Finney’s death, a discrepancy is discovered between Kirk’s sworn testimony and the computer records from on board the Enterprise. Based on that discrepancy, a full court martial is called and Kirk must face seemingly insurmountable odds in refuting a computer which is considered to be irrefutable.

The episode does its best to keep things interesting and tight knit by way of the prosecution: a former love interest for Kirk, in Lt. Areel Shaw (Joan Marshall). Shaw’s character is certainly compelling as the career lawyer forced to prosecute someone she obviously cares a great deal about. And the defense lawyer, Samuel T. Cogley (Elisha Cook, Jr.) is a wonderfully quirky character who is charged with injecting the episode with its primary commentary about the trappings of computers, and the rights of humanity within an ever increasingly technological world.

It is this commentary which is at the heart of the episode, symbolized by the fact that Kirk is very nearly convicted based entirely on the “testimony” of a computer. And it’s an important lesson as illustrated by the fact that the computer itself was manipulated by none other than Ben Finney himself, in an attempt to discredit Kirk due to some resentment he harbors toward the captain. Unfortunately, it’s a very minor element in an episode that seems more focused on courtroom procedure and drinks with former acquaintances than on the conflict between technology and humanity.

The trial itself was entertaining, particularly in terms of its emphasis on Kirk’s character as given by Spock and McCoy. But the final solution to the mystery, that Ben Finney has been hiding on the Enterprise, is revealed only by way of an unfortunately contrived, and conflicting, method – evacuating the entire ship and listening for a single heartbeat that is detected by … computers. I guess having computers around to do some detective work is a good thin afterall?

“Court Martial” is an episode that has good intentions. But the execution of its story, primarily as far as its main commentary is concerned, is rather lacking. It’s a shame because it wastes a number of decent performances from Kirk, Shaw, Cogley, Spock and McCoy. Even some of the individual scenes are enjoyable, such as Cogley’s books or Spock’s use of chess to discover a problem with the computer programming. But in this case the whole is less than the sum of its parts.

Filed under: Original Series