Patterns of Force

* (1 star out of 5)

All these Nazi costumes hanging empty in the Props Department- seems like a shame to waste them...

What luck! Here's a Nazi Planet!

Kirk's old academy history instructor, Professor John Gill, hasn't reported in from his studies of planet Ekos. And the Ekosians suddenly have thermonuclear missiles. Coincidence?

The warlike Ekosians were technologically primitive, while their peaceful neighbours on planet Zeon have interplanetary ships. Now the Ekosians have adopted Nazi culture, declared John Gill the Fuhrer, and are dealing death to Zeon pigs. (For story purposes, don't ask why the Zeons didn't just take their ships back to Zeon.)

If dressing up as Mobsters was funny, dressing up as Nazis should be a RIOT!

Kirk & Spock are instantly captured and jailed.

It's time for shirtlessness and whipping again. Gotta have something for the ladies.

Thanks to Voltaire for summing up the plot of this episode in his song "U.S.S. Make Shit Up": "We met a nasty Nazi alien who locked our asses up. We used a hunk of crystal and a metal piece of bed, and made a laser phaser gun and shot him in the head."

Ekosians love Nazi culture so much, they changed their own name for themselves, but they write in English on their Fire Doors? I sense the genius of the Red Skull behind this!

The Zeons are named Abrom, Isak, & Davod. If no Earther was messing with planet Zeon, how come they're so Jewish already? Spock (despite Miri's Earth & others) states the Ekosians being Nazi parallels was IMPOSSIBLE. But nobody wonders what's up with Zion, uh, Zeon.

Ask the Enterprise computer for a 1944 Gestapo Doctor Colonel uniform and no problem, away you go. Ask what the flipping flying frak John Gill was thinking and all I hear is the wind...

Granted, Deputy Fuhrer Melakon seized power, drugged Gill, and corrupted the 'Nazi Efficiency Without Nazi Sadism' Plan. But even for a fictional character, John Gill must be the dumbest history professor in Starfleet history. Why did he interfere at all? Why give them nukes? Why does dressing as Nazis make them more efficient? Maybe the biggest question of all: why would he want to make violent aliens MORE efficient?

Kirk's closing statements seem to include the notion that 'The Leader Principle' is innately bad. I... but... huh? Doesn't Kirk know he's a leader? Don't go looking for answers in "Patterns of Force".