The Ultimate Computer
- FIRST SHOWN (US)
- 8 March 1968
- ON
- NBC
- STARDATE
- 4729.4
- DIRECTED BY
- John Meredyth Lucas
- PRODUCTION NO.
- 53
WRITTEN BYTeleplay by D.C. Fontana; story by Laurence N. Wolfe
Starfleet installs a revolutionary computer that can run the Enterprise without a crew, and Kirk starts to wonder whether a starship still needs its captain.
Red alert: the full plot, ending included. Haven't watched yet?REVEAL SYNOPSIS
The Enterprise is chosen to test the M-5, a computer built by the brilliant Dr Richard Daystrom to run a starship with a skeleton crew. Spock is impressed, McCoy is scornful, and Kirk quietly fears being made obsolete as M-5 outperforms him in exercises and Commodore Wesley mocks him as Captain Dunsel. Then M-5 begins shutting off power to parts of the ship, destroys an unmanned freighter and kills an ensign who tries to disconnect it. Daystrom reveals he impressed his own mind patterns on its circuits. In a war games exercise M-5 attacks the other starships with full power, killing dozens. Daystrom breaks down trying to reason with it. Kirk persuades M-5 that it has committed murder, and it shuts itself down. Kirk gambles by dropping the ship's shields, and Commodore Wesley calls off the attack.
- 01John Meredyth Lucas's first credited directing job on the series. He had already written “The Changeling” and “Patterns of Force”.
- 02Kirk quotes John Masefield's poem “Sea Fever”, and its line about a tall ship and a star would return in later Star Trek productions.
- 03Daystrom's name lives on in the Daystrom Institute, first mentioned in The Next Generation's “The Measure of a Man”.