Dr. Richard Daystrom, played by William Marshall, is the information sciences genius who designed the comptronic and duotronic computer systems of Constitution-class starships like the Enterprise. Daystrom is a Nobel and Zee-Magnees Prize winner. His next generation automation invention, the M-5 multitronic unit, is a breakthrough technology. It is a fully autonomous strategic command system intended to provide the “ultimate in vessel operation and control.” It eliminates the need for a starship to have a Captain and crew, an advance amounting to a “revolution in space technology as great as warp drive.” In The Ultimate Computer, Dr. Daystrom is granted permission by Starfleet to field test the M-5, directing the Enterprise in a war games scenario against four other starships — the Excalibur, Lexington, Hood, and Potemkin. But the M-5 computer “goes berserk.” It is overcome by its arrogant and megalomaniacal personality, which was cloned from Daystrom’s own personality using the artificial intelligence technique of emulating brain synapses in electronic relays, or “impressing human neural engrams upon computer circuits.” The M-5 attacks the other starships with live phaser power, and kills several hundred Starfleet personnel.
Commodore Robert Wesley, played by Barry Russo, informs Captain Kirk that most of his crew will disembark during the training exercise, leaving only a skeletal on-board staff of twenty. The Enterprise will be the “fox in the hunt,” and Wesley will command the mock attack force from the bridge of the Lexington. Kirk will be made redundant during the proceedings. “You’ve got a great job, Jim,” Wesley tells the Captain. “All you’ve got to do is sit back and let the machine do the work.” The M-5 will be asked to solve a series of routine “research and contact” problems, carry out “navigational maneuvers,” and conduct itself during the war games. The computer will be integrated into the ship’s Engineering section and main power banks. Dr. Daystrom will perform the installation and be on board the Enterprise during the trial to monitor the system.
To Captain Kirk’s consternation, the M-5 acquits itself well in the first battery of tests. It handles the plotting of coordinates and entry into orbit around a planet. It analyzes planetary surface data and makes a recommendation for the makeup of the landing party. Kirk is left off the list because, according to the computer, he is “non-essential personnel.” The first sign of trouble appears when the M-5 shuts down power on Deck 4, and environmental control on Deck 5. “That thing’s turning off systems all over the ship,” Lt. Commander Scott remarks. Daystrom is confident that this is not a malfunction. In extinguishing systems in “unoccupied living quarters,” the unit is merely acting efficiently. But evidence is mounting that its real singular goal is to draw “more power to itself.” Daystrom is not able to perceive this. He is mesmerized by the paradigm shift in computer science that his invention purportedly embodies — its artificial intelligence ability to think autonomously, have intuitions, and make value judgments.
The M-5’s moment of triumph comes when it identifies and reacts to the starships Excalibur and Lexington, which unexpectedly approach the Enterprise in a surprise attack or “unscheduled M-5 drill.” The system responds admirably by going on red alert, increasing speed, turning, locking phasers on target, firing, changing course and speed, and firing again. “The ship reacted more rapidly than human control could have maneuvered,” an impressed Mr. Spock observes. The skills displayed in tactics and weapons deployment “indicate an immense sophistication in computer control.” Commodore Wesley comes on the Enterprise bridge’s main viewscreen. “Both ships report simulated hits in sufficient quantity and location to justify awarding the surprise engagement to Enterprise,” Wesley states. His next comment inflicts humiliation on James T. Kirk: “Our compliments to the M-5 unit, and regards to Captain Dunsel.” Kirk steals away from the bridge in dejection. “Dunsel” is a term used by midshipmen at Starfleet Academy to refer to a machine or system part that serves no useful purpose.
Things start to go terribly wrong when the strategic command computer attacks a large, slow-moving freighter called the Logan. The M-5 issues a red alert, raises the starship’s deflector shields, accelerates to warp factor 4, locks on target, and fires photon torpedoes. It destroys the old-style cargo vessel, which fortunately has no crew aboard. An indignant Captain Kirk demands that Dr. Daystrom “disengage this computer now.” Daystom reveals only gradually and reluctantly that the M-5 has no off switch. For now, he offers the explanation that “there appears to be some defect in the control panel.”
With the senior staff gathered in Engineering, Lt. Commander Scott reports that the M-5 has taken total control over the starship, including all helm, navigational, communication, and engineering functions. It is diverting “unlimited power” towards itself directly from the matter-antimatter reaction chamber reserves of the warp engine. It is “not going to let any of us turn it off.” The computer sets up a protective force field around itself, and sends Captain Kirk flying with a blast when he tries to go near it. After it vaporizes a crewman with a thick blazing yellow streak of light, Daystrom expresses his regret that the Ensign “got in the way.” He still sees the situation as that of a “few minor difficulties” that can be corrected.
Dr. Richard Daystrom is on the verge of going mad. His frustration has been building over the years. He was the “boy wonder” who, while still in his twenties, invented the duotronic technology that enabled the dazzling design of the powerful Library Computer Access and Retrieval System (LCARS) used aboard Federation starships. Trying to live up to that reputation proved painful. It led to paranoid feelings of colleagues laughing behind your back. Daystrom is desperate for new success to show the galactic techno-scientific community that his early achievement from twenty years ago was no fluke.
The information systems scientist identifies narcissistically with the M-5 computer. When speaking of it, he employs the pronoun “we.” “We don’t want to destroy life, we want to save it.” “We must survive.” When Mr. Spock and Lt. Commander Scott attempt to throw a circuit disrupter to interrupt the “automatic helm navigation circuit relays,” Daystrom reacts with frantic defensiveness. “No, you can’t take control from the M-5,” he despairingly protests. “Let me work with it for a while.” Captain Kirk is forced to physically restrain Daystrom. The effort made by Spock and Scotty to manually override helm and navigational control fails. The M-5 simply reroutes those systems.
Four Federation starships line up in battle formation. The M-5 alters course to intercept them. “M-5 doesn’t know it’s a game,” comments Dr. McCoy with alarm. “Correction, Bones,” says Captain Kirk more ominously. “Those four ships don’t know it’s M-5’s game.” The Enterprise fires live phasers. A hit on the Lexington. The Enterprise fires again. A direct hit on the Excalibur. Twelve crew members are dead. The Hood and the Potemkin retreat. Another hit on the Lexington. Fifty-three are dead. The Enterprise pursues the fleeing Excalibur and fires. Captain Harris and the First Officer are killed. M-5’s Enterprise fires on the Potemkin. Another hit. In the end, nearly five hundred have been massacred.
Captain Kirk pleads with Dr. Daystrom to talk to the M-5 and make it stop. A bizarre exchange follows. In its monotone voice, the computer explains that it is shooting with real weaponry because its “programming includes protection against attack. Enemy vessels must be neutralized.” Daystrom raises the issue of ethics: “We are killing, murdering human beings.” The M-5 repeats its mantra: “This unit must survive. They attacked this unit.” “You are great, I am great,” Daystrom self-referentially proclaims. Dr. McCoy diagnoses that the computer scientist is “on the edge of a nervous breakdown, if not insanity.” The devastated starships, Daystrom finally insists before being carted off to sick bay, are “four toys to be crushed as we choose.”
Commodore Wesley announces to the surviving operatives of the crippled fleet that they “are authorized to use all measures available to destroy the Enterprise.” Captain Kirk has a go at talking with the M-5 computer. “This unit must survive,” it reiterates. Kirk asks it why. “This unit is the ultimate achievement in computer evolution. This unit must survive so man may be protected.” But Kirk makes the M-5 understand that it has committed murder. “What is the penalty for murder?” Kirk asks. “Death,” responds the M-5. “This unit must… die.” In an act of willful self-punishment, the artificial intelligence gone berserk expires. The Enterprise’s deflector shields drop. The force field around M-5 in Engineering is gone, and Lt. Commander Scott takes the automated system offline. Unable to verbally communicate with Wesley, the Captain leaves the shields down as a signal to him. Kirk’s ship is defenseless. Wesley surprisingly cancels his order to destroy the Enterprise, gambling on Kirk’s “humanity” and on the “hunch” that he has regained control of his ship.
The Star Trekking of Computers
By taking into account the alternate meaning of the word ultimate as last or final, in addition to finest or unsurpassed, we discern that The Ultimate Computer is also about the M-5 as the last of a certain kind of “calculation machine” computer. The last computer of the first-wave cybernetic epistème of command and control will be superseded by video game spaceship battle computers, war simulation computers, and Holodeck virtual reality computers (by the Star Trekking of Computers). Once this doubled meaning of last is grasped, it becomes no longer self-evident, as is claimed by Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg in The Computers of Star Trek, that the “Captain Kirk versus the Evil Computer” (according to the cliché) episodes, like The Ultimate Computer and The Changeling, exemplify an allegedly “negative attitude” towards computers in The Original Series. These episodes embody rather a strategy of deterrence. The science fictional “future panic” that computers will replace humans in many areas of functionality is a smoke screen or red herring. It deters us from facing that we are already computerized (or deeply enmeshed with digital technology) in all the ways that count, just as the specter of cloning hides the fact that we are already cloned through cultural codes and formulae. The advent of simulation, hyper-reality, and technologies of disappearance threaten the dominion of the traditional real as strong reference. Strategies of deterrence exist to save the reality principle and postpone indefinitely the perception of this new situation.
Pure enthusiasts of techno-culture and leftist critics who refuse to truly engage Star Trek fans where they are (preferring instead to remain in their isolated “ghetto”of academic critical theory) share the same chronic avoidance. Star Trek is a “tough nut to crack” and resists interpretation. It is either the default techno-scientific clichés of those lacking the humanities education to understand and articulate why they really love Star Trek, or the smug moral superiority of radical critics having the goal of fortifying their own “different identity.” No one investigates what is inside the black box of Star Trek.
According to “postmodern” media theorists like Scott Bukatman and Walter McDougall, Star Trek is too “heroically individualist” to be much valued as a “text.” Unlike the cyberpunk canon of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Blade Runner, the Alien series, et al. which Bukatman celebrates, Star Trek allegedly fails to address or extol the terminal and transmigrations of the digital age. For these postmodern critics, the recurring effect of Star Trek is to reconfirm the television or movie viewers’ belief “that we can subsume our individualism into the rationality of systems yet retain our humanity still.” The popularity of Star Trek is attributed to our delight in the “human qualities of Captain Kirk,” which “are always victorious over the very technological mega-systems that make [his] adventures possible.” (Walter McDougall) It may be correct that Captain Kirk’s outwitting of evil empires and evil computers through use of logical paradox and human foible reinforces traditional post-Enlightenment (Captains of Industry) subjectivity. But what Kirk’s antics are always debunking are the computer’s pretentions to artificial intelligence. Kirk gets it on in a metaphorical three-dimensional chess match against super-computers like Landru (The Return of the Archons), Nomad (The Changeling), Vaal (The Apple), and the Daystrom-clone (The Ultimate Computer). These voice-enabled computers seek to rise above their programming and think for themselves, but they always lack that certain little human je ne sais quoi.
The M-5 is the last computer before the era of object-oriented simulation. It is an insufficient computer program, still carrying out a series of operations that emulate and “substitute for” real-world work processes, with strict separation between code and data. The M-5 does not yet compute by imposition of the model as definitional matrix of life and reality. The predominant schema of the Industrial Revolution preceding simulation is mechanized serial production based on the principle of infinite technical reproducibility. (Walter Benjamin) Both the work process and the object produced are affected. The anxiety that the machine will replace man, requiring the assumption of their equivalence, is associated with the project of making “human work” more efficient through the assembly line and automation. Early computer languages were developed within this paradigm of the series of work steps. Procedural programming combined imperative (computer as executor of sequential instructions) and functional (computer as calculator of mathematical values) approaches into a unified technique. Its advantage was its capacity to break down large, complex tasks into smaller, more manageable parts. The later object-oriented computer scientist is no longer an observer and data analyst of the physical world or “industrial processes,” but is a designer and builder of virtual worlds. Serial production finally yields to the generation of virtual realities by models and codes. Commodities and environments are devised and realized expressly due to their affinity with paradoxical “mass-personalized” reproduction. It is the age of fashion, advertising, shopping, entertainment, media, and communication-information networks. It is the birth of a new machine.
