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Above: (A) M-5 draws more and more power from the Enterprise's warp engines. (B) M-5 fires Enterprise's phasers at Federation starships. (C) Chief Engineer Scott and First Officer Spock attempt to curtail M-5 in a Jefferies tube ("Jefferies tube" as a term was not used in Star Trek unti [TNG]). (D) Kirk prevents Daystrom from stopping Scott and Spock. (E) Kirk berates Daystrom for the massacre. (F) Daystrom talks to M-5; listeners note that their relationship is personal, not man and machine. (G) Spock subdues a raving Daystrom by applying the Vulcan nerve pinch. (H) Daystrom in sickbay. [TOS: The Ultimate Computer]

Unfortunately, since Daystrom used his own neural engrams for the prototype M-5 computer, it mimicked the unstable parts of his personality too. During the field test, the M-5 was unaware that the scheduled war games were merely a test exercise and opened fire with full phasers on the USS Excalibur and the USS Lexington, killing hundreds of people.

Above: the Enterprise with damaged starships, creative impression artwork from source SOTL

However, the M-5 possessed Daystrom's sense of morality, and he persuaded it to deactivate itself as atonement for committing the sin of murder. The deaths and the failure of his creation pushed Daystrom's mental state into insanity and he was committed to a rehabilitation centre.

The following are audio clips from [TOS: The Ultimate Computer], and include the sound of Daystrom's voice. The descriptions are the opening words of each clip:

1. Daystrom: "M-5 is ready to take control of the ship."

2. Daystrom explains M-5's shutdown of systems and its drawing on more power

3. Daystrom: "The multitronic unit is a revolution in computer science."

4. Daystrom: "You don't shut a child off when it makes a mistake."

5. Daystrom: "One machine can do all those things they send men out to do now."

6. Kirk: "There's your murder charge!" (see picture E above)

7. Daystrom: "M-5, your attack on the starships was wrong."

8. Daystrom: "To kill is a breaking of civil and moral laws..." (see picture F above)

9. Daystrom: "Seminars and lectures..."

10. Kirk: "The M-5 must be destroyed."

Galaxy-class starship USS Enterprise-D, [TNG: Interface]

However, multitronics as an advanced computer concept, if at first a highly experimental one, was not finished and development work continued later.

Examples of Federation starships equipped with multitronic supplements are as follows, and note that the "M-" numbers are higher than "5" which indicates developmental progress:

• The Constitution-class starship USS Enterprise NCC-1701's refit in 2273 had as its primary computer system a Daystrom Duotronic III Processor with Multitronic M-7 Supplement.
• The Miranda-class starship USS Majestic NCC-31060, first commissioned in 2283, had as its primary computer system a Daystrom Duotronic III Processor with Multitronic M-9 Supplement.
• The Galaxy-class starship USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D (pictured above), first commissioned in 2357, had an M-15 Duotronic V Processor as its primary computer system.

Duotronic enhancers were finally replaced by isolinear optical chips in 2329, as noted in [TNG: Relics].

By the 24th century, some highly sophisticated computer programs, such as Starfleet's Emergency Medical Hologram, utilised multitronic pathway programming techniques, as noted in [#46 The Swarm]. As he works at the computer console to overlay his own program onto the Doctor's deteriorating one, the holographic diagnostic tool in Dr Zimmerman's image comments: "I'm increasingly dubious as to the outcome of this effort. The EMH pathways are seriously degraded. They might not accept a matrix overlay. .... I assure you: I am working as quickly as I can. If I don't prepare the multitronic paths properly there's no chance of success."

[#46 The Swarm]