SUMMARY: Kirk intervenes on a primitive planet to restore the balance of power altered by the Klingons. Unfortunately, this means arming one group of natives and starting/continuing an arms race.
In 2267, the USS Enterprise NCC-1701 visits a primitive planet for scientific research. The villagers are fighting their neighbours, the hill people. The latter are led by Tyree, made a 'brother' of James T. Kirk during a ceremony in 2254 when Kirk conducted a planet survey here. The landing party sees that the villagers are armed with flintlock rifles (a primitive, muzzle-loading weapon which uses an explosive charge to propel a small projectile at the target), this being technology which is 12 centuries in advance. A group of villagers armed with the rifles are lying in wait to ambush several hill people, one of them being Tyree. Warned by Spock that regulations forbid him to use a phaser, Kirk throws a rock which lands near one of the would-be attackers who, in surprise, fires his gun. This alerts and saves the hill people. But the landing party is compelled to beam back aboard the Enterprise after Spock is critically injured when fired at by one of the villagers.
Spock: "Captain, use of our phasers is expressly forbidden."
[TOS: Season 2: A Private Little War]
On the Enterprise, it is realised that the Klingons must be giving the hill people the flintlocks, in violation of the treaty. The Enterprise remains hidden from the Klingon ship and Kirk and McCoy beam down in native costume to investigate further and accumulate evidence. They are unable to contact Starfleet because to do so would reveal their presence and thus lose them any advantage over the Klingons - accordingly, Kirk must make the decisions.
McCoy: "Want to think about it again, Jim? - Starfleet's orders about this planet state no interference-"
Kirk: "'No interference with normal social development.' I'm not only aware of it, it was my survey 13 years ago that recommended it."
McCoy: "I read it. Inhabitants in many ways superior to humans. 'Left alone, they undoubtedly will someday develop a remarkably advanced and peaceful culture.'"
Kirk: "Indeed, and I intend to see that they have that chance."
[TOS: Season 2: A Private Little War]
When Kirk is wounded by the fangs of a mugato creature, Tyree's ambitious wife Nona agrees to help him as she wants Kirk's phaser as it is a superior weapon, and she saves his life in a mystical procedure using a mahko root, for Nona is a Kahn-ut-tu, that is, a medicine woman trained in the mystic arts including the curative powers of medicinal herbs and roots. Kahn-ut-tu women are considered to be especially desirable.
Upon learning that the Klingons are breaking the treaty by supplying the village people with flintlock weapons, Kirk persuades Tyree to accept similar weapons from the Federation.
McCoy and Kirk surreptitiously gather evidence that the Klingons are supplying flintlocks to the villagers, pictured is the villagers' leader Apella. Unfortunately they are discovered and have to fight their way out.
At first Tyree, a man of peace, refuses to fight. McCoy protests Kirk's policy and Kirk explains that he has no choice.
McCoy: "Do I have to say it? It's bad enough there's already one serpent in Eden teaching one side about gunpowder, you're gonna make sure they all know about it."
Kirk: "Exactly. Each side receives the same knowledge and the same type of firearm."
McCoy: "Have you gone out of your mind? Yes, maybe you have. Tyree's wife, she said there was something in that root. She said that now you can refuse her nothing."
Kirk: "Superstition."
McCoy: "Is it a coincidence that this is exactly what she wants?"
Kirk: "Is it? She wants superior weapons, the one thing neither side can have. Bones, Bones, in the normal development of this planet there was a status quo between the hill people and the villagers. The Klingons changed that with the flintlocks. If this planet is to develop the way it should we must equalise both sides again."
McCoy: "Jim, that means you're condemning this whole planet to a war that may never end! It can go on for year after year, massacre after massacre-"
Kirk: "Alright, Doctor! Alright, alright, say I'm wrong, say I'm drugged, say the woman drugged me. What is your sober, sensible solution to all this?"
McCoy: "I don't have a solution. But furnishing them firearms is certainly not the answer."
Kirk: "Bones, do you remember the ancient brush wars on the Asian continent, two giant powers involved much like the Klingons and ourselves, neither side felt that they could pull out?"
McCoy: "Yes, I remember. It went on bloody year after bloody year."
Kirk: "Then what would you have suggested, that one side arm its friends with an overpowering weapon? Mankind would never have lived to travel space if they had. No, the only solution is what happened back then - a balance of power."
McCoy: "And if the Klingons give their side even more?"
Kirk: "Then we arm our side with exactly that much more. The balance of power - the trickiest, most difficult dirtiest game of them all, but the only one that preserves both sides."
McCoy: "What about your friend Tyree? Will he understand this 'balance of power'?"
Kirk: "Probably not, but I'm going to have to try and make him understand. I never had a more difficult task."
McCoy: "Well, Jim, here's another morsel of agony for you: since Tyree won't fight he will be one of the first to die."
[TOS: Season 2: A Private Little War]
Kirk goes to Nona hoping to persuade her to convince Tyree. They are interrupted when a mugato attacks Nona. Kirk vapourises it with his phaser. Nona stuns him with a rocks and steals the phaser, and attempts to change sides by offering it to a number of villagers. They are suspicious and attack her. She is unable to make the phaser work and, whilst searching for her (and the phaser), Tyree, accompanied by Kirk and McCoy, sees her and shouts her name. This causes the village men to view Nona as a spy leading them into an ambush and one of them stabs her to death.
A mugato attacks Nona. Kirk phasers the creature. Nona realises the superior power of Kirk's weapon over flintlocks. She tries to take the phaser from a half-stunned Kirk. She hits him with a rock and takes the phaser. Found by Tyree (pictured left) and McCoy, Kirk realises Nona took his phaser. Nona offers the phaser to the villagers. They attack her.
Tyree and Kirk see off the village men, but now Tyree definitely wants weapons so that he can take revenge. Accordingly, Kirk, having recovered his phaser, orders a hundred flintlock weapons to be manufactured.
In this way, since the Klingons have interfered, the Federation makes a measured effort to maintain the balance of power on the planet.
DISCUSSION:
Despite being told by Spock: "Captain, use of our phasers is expressly forbidden." Kirk uses his phaser anyway in sight of a native, and unfortunately that native is the ambitious Nona. He did so in order to save her life, however, and earlier she and Tyree secretly observe the newcomers and she tells him that they must acquire such weapons but Kirk was not aware of that. Earlier, when Spock is injured by a gunshot wound, when Kirk goes to aim his phaser at the villagers pursuing them, Spock pushes it away and says that he can travel, whereupon Kirk helps him move away so that they can be beamed up. Since the pursuing villagers arrive at the spot where they beam up barely a second afterward, it seems odd that Kirk should delay the request for beaming up until then as the villagers would see the sparkle of the transporter beam and their quarry vanishing, and thus there might be cultural contamination anyway.
Kirk quotes his own words from the planet survey he conducted 13 years previously: "'No interference with normal social development.'" That would seem to be obvious. Reports often include sections that should be titled "stuff that is really obvious" (this article has a lot of that kind of stuff), but quoted with only one other line from his report gives an unnecessary emphasis to them. Of course, the scriptwriters did not write the rest of Kirk's report, but inclusion in his report of these obvious words suggests that it is possible to make different recommendations. Indeed, it seems that different recommendations are made, for instance leading to Starfleet's orders to Kirk to make contact with the primitive inhabitants of planet Gamma Trianguli VI in [TOS: The Apple].
The problem facing Kirk and the Federation is what to do when a Federation enemy, here the Klingons, have interfered with a planet. In this case, the Klingons upset the planet's balance of power by arming one group of the population. The solution adopted by Kirk is to arm the other group in order to restore the balance of power, interpreting the Prime Directive to mean that neither side should have an advantage, that it was essential that there was a balance of power. On Tyree's planet, this results in an arms race, and it is fortunate in terms of preventing too high an escalation of that arms race that Nona is killed and is thus unable to capitalise on the use of Kirk's superior weaponry (the Starfleet hand-phaser).
It is not just implications arising from the Prime Directive that Kirk has to wrestle with in this story, but also how to restore the balance of the treaty. The nature of the treaty is not described in this episode, so a brief history, description and discussion are in the Notes below.
By creating an equality of arms, Kirk will be setting up the same situation as the one he encounters with the war and the balance of power between Eminiar VII and Vendikar, in that the killing will go on but both sides will be preserved (Kirk talks in this story about both sides being preserved by the balance of power). The nature of the weapons is irrelevant to my point (Eminiar VII and Vendikar are using computers to conduct their war). If Kirk or the Federation uses Kirk's ploy in [TOS: A Taste Of Armageddon], namely tell both sides that they need not kill "today", lasting peace might ensue on Tyree's planet.....let us hope so....but it would only be after considerable bloodshed. It is disturbing, despite the 'no other choice' circumstances noted by Kirk, that he should advocate a solution that will inevitably involve bloodshed. The other solution, that of withdrawing and allowing the villagers to overcome and either enslave or wipe out the hill people, would also involve bloodshed but of limited duration. McCoy fears a war without end. (I am not advocating one solution over another, merely observing.) Often what happens is that a conquered race ends up integrating with the conquered race so that the society evolves - it was realised by ancient Rome at most times that assimilation was the best way to conquer, hmm rather like the Borg! rather than simply destroy or keep suppressed by force, the "make them into us" policy, and also the conquerors often absorb aspects of the conquered's society. But if the villagers did not assimilate and develop through conquering the hill people, throughout Earth's history, it has been (and will continue to be) the fate of certain peoples to die out, either naturally or due to conquest, so some might argue, who is Kirk to decide which of these peoples it should be or to artificially preserve the life expectancy of a race? Tyree's and his people's attitude, that of peace and not wanting to kill, is precisely that which the Federation wants to encourage, and that is a big sacrifice which Kirk makes, one that somehow seems unjustified as regards individuals and the peaceful development of a society, and he justifies it by the rather conceptual taking of the view that he has a duty to restore the balance of power (logical whether or not imposed by the Organian Peace Treaty, see above) since the Klingons have altered that balance. Kirk should know as well as anyone that having to maintain a balance of power stifles trust between nations, harms trade and prosperity, and focusses resources toward offence/defence - all as exhibited during the Cold War.
McCoy says of Nona: "She said now that you can refuse her nothing." Strictly speaking this is incorrect word order. "now" and "that" should be transposed, which I have done in the dialogue quote above.
The arms race that ensues on Tyree's planet provides the episode's message, being a fictionalised parallel to the Cold War arms race which was running quite 'hot' at the time. In the Cold War, which arose after the re-adjustment of power balances in Europe following the end of World War II, the United States often armed one side of a dispute and its enemy the U.S.S.R. (a.k.a. the Soviet Union) responded by arming the other. A similar arms race forms part of the backstory of [TNG: Too Short a Season]. However, in [Voyager], Captain Janeway refuses to allow the Kazon-Nistrim and the Kazon-Ogla to have replicator or other Federation technology, believing it would tip the balance of power among the Kazon factions. This policy extends to taking action to retrieve stolen technology - Chakotay disobeys orders to act unilaterally when he carries out (but succeeds in) the dangerous mission of destroying a Voyager transporter module stolen by the Kazon-Nistrim, [#27 Maneuvers]. In [#11 State Of Flux], the Voyager crew are disconcerted to discover that they have a traitor on board who has abetted the Kazon-Nistrim by providing them with replicator technology, although the Kazon ship on which the technology is installed is crippled and its crew all but wiped out due to failure to install it properly. They retrieve the technology and realise that the Kazon have not given up on trying to acquire Federation technology.
There are two ways that Kirk or Starfleet could have dealt with this without resort to arming Tyree's people:
Inform the Organians and ask them to enforce the treaty against the Klingons unless the Organians believe the Klingons' tactics are acceptable (not necessarily just, but acceptable).
Inform the Klingons that Starfleet is aware of their activity, and warn them that Starfleet will take up the arms race if the Klingons do not at once remove the flintlocks they have supplied and promise never to arm either the villagers or the hill people. The Klingons might decide it would be wasteful to embark on an arms race on this planet. If they carry on arming the villagers, Starfleet has lost nothing. The later type of Klingons such as appear in Worf's time, if they decide to agree to Starfleet's terms, would uphold the oath, but the Klingons of this time are untrustworthy so Starfleet could station an observation satellite in orbit and/or send periodic inspection teams.
NOTES:
As mentioned under Discussion above, it is not just implications arising from the Prime Directive that Kirk has to wrestle with in this story, but also how to restore the balance of the treaty. The nature of the treaty is not described in this episode, so brief history, description and discussion follow. First contact between the Klingon Empire and the Federation took place in 2218, in [TOS: Day of the Dove] (the Klingon commander Kang in that story is the same one that Captain Sulu encounters in 2293 in [#44 Flashback]), a disastrous event that led to nearly a century of hostilities between the two powers as noted in [TNG: First Contact]. By 2267, negotiations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire were on the verge of breaking down. The Klingons issued an ultimatum to the Federation to withdraw from disputed areas claimed by both the Federation and the Klingon Empire or face war. The hostilities came to a head at planet Organia, the only Class-M world in the region. Unknown to either combatant, the Organians were extremely advanced noncorporeal lifeforms who in 2267, in [TOS: Errand Of Mercy], imposed the Organian Peace Treaty on both parties, thus effectively ending armed hostilities; those events are depicted. The treaty decreed that the Organians would tolerate no hostilities between the Klingons and the Federation, and provided that any planet disputed between the two powers would be awarded to the side that demonstrated it could develop that planet most efficiently. There was also a provision allowing for starship crews from either side to use shore facilities (such as space stations) of the other, ref. [TOS: The Trouble with Tribbles] and therefore implied in [DS9: Trials And Tribble-ations]. The Organians predicted that eventually the Federation and the Klingons would become fast friends, a prediction which turned out to be largely correct by the mid 23rd century, the era of [TNG]. It is against this long history of mutual distrust between the Federation and the Klingons and the subsequent treaty, namely the Khitomer Accords of 2293, which is the backdrop for initial events in [#160 Prophecy], when USS Voyager encounters a Klingon sect in the Delta Quadrant whose ancestors had set out from the Beta Quadrant generations earlier.
In 2254, when Kirk conducted the planet survey, he was presumably serving aboard the USS Farragut as that starship is described as his first assignment after he time at Starfleet Academy in [TOS: Obsession].
The planet is not named in the story or anywhere on screen or in dialogue in Star Trek, but an unfilmed line in the script indicates that it may have been called Neural. As that name conjures up "neural" associations, possibly associated with the mind-changing properties of certain plantlife there, it is probably best that the name is not known and not canon.
Spock's and McCoy's look-alikes do not look much like them. Of course, in the era when [TOS] was first broadcast, domestic freeze-frame video-recorders or DVD-players did not exist so the chances of them being examined closely were remote.
McCoy: "Do I have to say it? It's bad enough there's already one serpent in Eden teaching one side about gunpowder, you're gonna make sure they all know about it."
