The Enterprise has been chosen to host some new super computer called the M5 Multi-Something Whatchamacallit. The M5 is also a highway in England, but the Brits probably let the trademark lapse by the 24th century so Starfleet snapped up the name. Their next two computers will be "The Autobahn" and "Route 66, starring George Maharis." The inventor of the M5 is Dr. Daystrom, who is twelve feet tall, sounds like that guy who used to say "this is a cola nut" on those ancient Earth 7-Up commercials, and wears a pale blue and orange jumpsuit that looks like he swiped it off the Partridge Family's touring bus.
Daystrom wires the M5 into the Enterprise's system, completely automating the ship's functions. Kirk has been ordered to keep only twenty crew members onboard and the Enterprise is sent off to engage in war games with a bunch of other Federation ships. After reading the two previous sentences, who could possibly guess what's going to happen next? Not me!
Instead of everything going exactly according to plan and the M5 functioning perfectly, the plot takes an amazingly unexpected and shocking twist. Brace yourself for the incredible turn of events: the M5 takes over the Enterprise!
The M5 blows up an unmanned cargo ship. Every other ship the Enterprise has ever encountered has had people onboard, so it's pretty convenient that the plot tracks down the only unmanned ship in the entire galaxy in order to let us know the M5 means business but without, you know, actually killing anybody yet. Suspense? You bet!
Kirk feels useless because the M5 can do everything he can do, but Spock tells Kirk how much a ship needs its captain in a scene that ends as close to two guys making out as 1960s TV would allow.
Commodore Wesley says on the space telephone that the M5 is just swell, and that Kirk is "Captain Dunce Hill." Kirk runs off to cry into his plastic pillow while Spock explains to McCoy that Dunce Hill is a term back at Starfleet Junior High for something useless. This strikes me as an incredibly nasty comment from Commodore Wesley, but I'm suddenly distracted by the realization that Wesley was the name of that annoying kid on the New Generation Star Trek show. I wonder if Gene Roddenberry went to a barber named Wesley who gave him half-price haircuts every time he worked his name into a script. I've seen pictures of Gene Roddenberry. Half-price for those haircuts was still half-price too much.
I don't care how funky your disco roller skates are, Daystrom, Shirley Partridge wants her costume back.
McCoy brings Kirk some lime Jell-O shooters.
Spock examines the glowing gumdrops on his console and confirms that they're delicious.
Are those bra straps under Kirk's yellow pajama top?
M5 begins to shut down systems all over the Enterprise. In the far-off distant future, killer, sentient space computers will look like silver manhole covers with lightning sparking through them. This doesn't seem like a very practical design to me since the silver manhole cover serves no apparent purpose other than to sparkle. Maybe the moron at Starfleet headquarters who decided to strip virtually the entire crew off a hugely expensive ship and send it off fully armed to play war games in order to try out an untested piece of equipment is the guy who ordered the sparkly kaleidoscope installed so that when things inevitably go horribly wrong he can claim that M5 hypnotized him into making such a boneheaded decision.
Kirk says that Daystrom is as smart as "Einstein, Gazongas, and Sitar of Vulcan," but he apparently isn't smart enough to install an off switch.
The war games start, and M5 begins blowing starships up left and right. On the USS Lexington, Commodore Wesley acts like Kirk is in command even though he knows the robot has control of the ship. It doesn't occur to Wesley that the machine they were insane to put in charge might have taken complete control of the Enterprise, something I figured out was going to happen three minutes into the episode, which means I'd be a better starship captain than any of these guys. If you need me, I'll be out buying a pair of yellow pajamas and a spare toupee.
Kirk learns that Daystrom downloaded some of his own smarts into M5, so Kirk outsmarts it by telling it that it's killed people and asking it the penalty for murder. M5 says "death," which means they at least get one thing right in the future. M5 shuts itself off so that the other war games ships can blow it up, and as soon as it does Kirk orders Scotty and Spock to pull the plug and shut the thing down; something a phaser blast or a stick of dynamite rolled through the door would have accomplished half an hour ago, but okay.
At the end, Spock and McCoy playfully argue about whether computer companionship is preferable to that of humans, and Kirk laughs. 600 people just died on the ships the Enterprise attacked. Hah-hah-hah.
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