TOS-0220 A Piece of the Action

Image Credits: IMDB 🖖 The Original Series-1966 Season:02 Episode:20

Overall Score:       57.80 / 100
Star Trek Values:    4.25 / 5
Inspiring:           4.00 / 5
Story Development:   4.25 / 5

View Episode (Imbd)

A piece of action, an amusing episode, and a rigid reference to the future of the Star Trek.

The Story, Briefly

100 years ago, a federation ship named “Horizon”, leaves traces of Human history to Iotian world. During the century, Iotians developed a mafia-based society. Iotians sends a support request through radio signals, it takes decades to reach to federation. Upon the arrival of the message, the Enterprise crew goes to the planet.

Bosses from different territories tries to convince Captain Kirk to provide heaters (phaser) to gain dominance over other territories. They don’t have anything in return, which makes them to play games for Kirk, then Kirk continues to play and at the end he won the game with 40% share from their profits. Captain Kirk, notices the Federation and make them to visit Sigma Iotia 2, every year.

The idiom of “a piece of the action” means “a part of the profits or advantages that come from an activity”, which becomes the reality of Iotian world, where individuals are trying to get some little actions / benefits.

In the future, Iotia continues to reserve Kirk’s share, and it is used for the budget of a council like a think-tank; in the mission of building a more civilized form of government.

And, at the end of the episode, McCoy forget his communicator in the planet. (Which will lead Iotians to reverse engineer it and develop themselves in computing, cryptology.)

Thoughts

• A splendid and not catastrophic example of the violation of prime directive. In general, prime directive violations are imagined worse and more catastrophic.
• The Klingons gained a similar (even easier) power, like Iotians gained. They gained the warp drive and replicated that. Even so, Klingons became more diplomatic in time. So similarly, Iotians empower themselves and join to the federation. Which is consistent with the Klingon story.
• Iotian’s tendency to replicate and mimic things might lead to a scientific curiosity. Like in the example of Northside (Okymx’s) territory; their interest in building a radio station and using it was leading an engineering era. Every sentient is in the search of power. Likewise, we develop technology fastest in war periods. Iotians didn’t just mimic the things from a leftover book from Horizon, and they didn’t believe it was a bible. Iotians discovered a book which shared some historic moments with a different power distribution, so they followed it. Their consideration find the examples in the book realistic.
• Spock’s consultation to sociology database, and Kirk’s behaving was awesome; they’re acting within their defined characteristics.