TOS Patterns of Force -- Review

G: 1 star - Kind of incoherent, as an idea the various plot threads come together eventually and the characters mostly follow legible motivations. I like the spy vs spy stuff, like how the characters mostly avoid fights and do some clever stunts to get into and out of locked rooms etc, but I wish that the absolutely exact nazi paraphernalia went in the bin. The nazi apologism sucked and there were many other dated aspects to this one. Ending banter rebutted some of the worst of the apologetics but my ratings is still one because the inherent message is so bad.

C: 0 stars - No.

Is this Star Trek? Yes, but not necessarily in a good way. Anyone with a sane moral code and command of a starship like the enterprise should intervene more heavily and more immediately. The prime directive is already out the airlock.

Plot Summary: Kirk and Spock visit the Nazi section of disneyland, created by people who think the nazi regime was "!So Efficient". This is another morality play about the evils of interfering in the development of "primitive" cultures.

Index of TOS Reviews

Best comment on this episode found elsewhere - (https://www.letswatchstartrek.com/2013/05/27/tos-patterns-of-force/):

I strongly dislike the depiction of Nazi-Germany.

So the Zeons are the Jews? Yet they seem like some underground organization wanting to bring down the Nazis. They are not treated as victims. They infiltrate the Nazi-organizations to assasinate the Führer, matching the image Nazis tried to spread of Jews. The oppression against Zeons is hardly shown. It seems like they were about to kill them, but didn`t so far, and when their real Führer tells them not to they are ready to form a multicultural society? It`s not that racism is one flaw in an otherwise benevolent and efficient system. It`s a core element of the Nazis world view. The policies and mindset of actual Nazis had "antisemitic" written all over them, even before the "final solution". The writers could not have ignored that Antisemitism in Germany did not stop on May 8th, there were synagogues burning after the war, too.

The next (in my opinion even worse) part is that the Führer himself is a good guy and only wanted efficiency and progress. Many Germans who had twelve years of being taught Hitler is their savior reacted to learning about the holocaust exactly like this. "It wasn`t Hitler, it was some officers, had Hitler known of this, he would not have let this happen" ... no. I don`t think I have to explain Hitler was evil. This episode would reaffirm these dangerous myths, and it wasn`t aired in Germany until 1999, I understand why.

It is great a topic like Nazi ideology is being dealt with, but it needs to be done carefully. This is a showcasing of uniforms while being just one step away from saying "Hitler wasn`t that bad".
This show often gives us some kind of message for our time, especially when Spock comments on 20th century earth. What is the message here? Let`s be Nazis but without the death-camp-thingies?