Commodore Decker You Think I Dont Know That

A vengeful, PTSD-ridden Commodore Decker takes over the Enterprise.

Original air date: October 20, 1967

The Enterprise is investigating the destruction of several planetary systems when they come across a crippled starship, the The statesS Constellation. The only person on board is Commodore Matthew Decker, the ship's captain. Through the disturbed captain's rantings and the pre-recorded Helm's Log, Kirk and co. deduce that after the ship was severely damaged, the entire coiffure was beamed downwards to a local planet, the captain taking the duty of going downwards with the transport after seeing to his crew'south rubber. However, a planet-destroying weapon constructed long ago past a long-dead race destroyed the very planet where the captain thought his crew would be safe, leaving him live and grieving. While Kirk, Scotty and a minor repair crew stay on board the Constellation, Decker is beamed back with McCoy.

Decker isn't taking Survivor Guilt very well and takes control of the Enterprise upon learning that Spock would rather have logical steps than press forward and destroy the planet killer at all costs. Decker recklessly endangers the crew in his attempts to destroy the matter that killed his ain crew. When Kirk finds out virtually this, he is not amused to say the to the lowest degree. He orders Spock to salvage Decker, simply the commodore is merely finally removed when Spock threatens to arrest him. Spock sends him to sick bay, but instead of going there he attacks his guard and steals a shuttlecraft, intending to shove it down the machine'due south gullet — with himself within.

No one is able to save Decker. He doesn't desire to exist saved. Yet, Kirk believes he had the right idea to destroy the device. They just need to use something bigger than a shuttlecraft. Hmmm...this junked upwards starship that no one'southward using just might exercise....

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The Doomsday Tropes:

• Abandon Ship: The crew of the Constellation (salvage for Decker) did this prior to the episode. Unfortunately, non realizing what they were dealing with, they evacuated to a planet that the planet killer so destroyed.
• Asteroid Thicket: A more than justified example than most, as it'south the remains of a planet that was recently blasted to pieces. There hasn't been plenty time for it to either dissipate or coalesce into a new planetoid.
• Beard of Sorrow: It's probably been a few days since the devastation of the crew of the Constellation, every bit Decker has grown some hefty stubble. His unkempt appearance makes him stand up out among the clean and nifty members of the Enterprise crew.
• Breathy Lies: An accidental case created by the remastered version. It is stated that other than the bridge, the Constellation is habitable. One expect at the huge portions of the primary hull in detail which have been reduced to their structural framework makes that laughably incorrect.
• Bottle Episode: All the scenes are filmed on the Enterprise sets, including those on the Constellation (which is of the aforementioned grade, and then of course they'd exist designed the aforementioned way).
• Captain Obvious: Quite a literal example this time, when Kirk observes that the Constellation was attacked. Really, Jim? You don't think that kind of damage could be accidental?
  • At that place's a downright heartbreaking one when they discover Decker.

  Kirk: "Matt, where's your crew?"
  Decker: "On the third planet."
  Kirk: "At that place is no tertiary planet."
  Decker: (all simply sobbing) DON'T You lot Retrieve I KNOW THAT? There was. . . but non anymore!

• Casual Danger Dialog: Kirk is still absurd, despite existence seconds from being blown autonomously.

  Kirk: Gentlemen, I suggest you beam me aboard.

• Catastrophic Countdown: Kirk has 30 seconds to get off the Constellation.
• Damage Control: Despite the severe impairment to the Constellation, Scotty the Miracle Worker manages to get the ship moving on impulse, raise the Deflector Shields, and recharge a phaser bank.

  Kirk: If merely I had some phasers...
  Scotty: Phasers? You got 'em. I accept one banking company recharged.
  Kirk: Scotty, you just earned your pay for the week.

• Death Seeker: Decker.
• Decease World: The two remaining planets in the arrangement that the planet killer has not eaten. The innermost planet has a temperature hot enough to melt lead (327.5 degrees Celsius or 621.5 degrees Fahrenheit at standard atmospheric pressure level). The other has an temper poisonous to homo life. It is unclear whether planets we humans would guess inhospitable are also unappetizing for the planet killer, but there isn't any other explanation equally to why it is leaving them backside to move onto the next star system.
• Doctor's Orders: Commodore Decker takes advantage of Kirk being stuck on his crippled ship to have command of the Enterprise and avenge his lost crew. Basic tries, but tin't salve him because Decker refuses to submit to an evaluation, and holds Bones and Spock to regulations that allow him to pull rank. Kirk and Spock risk a courtroom martial to finally force Decker to stand down and go along to sickbay for his evaluation, just it never gets that far as Decker gets away from his security escort and pilots a shuttlecraft into the maw of the machine.
• Doomsday Device: Plainly, although any theories near the planet killer'south actual origin and purpose remain merely that.
• Dull Eyes of Unhappiness: The very first thing we notice almost Decker is the "Lord, kill me now!" look in his optics.
• Due to the Dead: Me Tv set (who was showing the episodes in society) reran this episode before long subsequently the death of William Windom.
• Explosive Instrumentation: Aught says "transporter malfunction" like a couple of smoke-plumed explosions.
• Face Death with Dignity: Decker tries, merely he conspicuously loses information technology seconds before the end. Kirk does a much improve chore of it.
• Feed It a Bomb: And 97.835 megatons of fusion energy brand for ane hell of a bomb.
• First-Name Footing:
  • Every bit an old friend, Kirk calls Decker "Matt" when the impairment control political party showtime finds him. After he realizes the take a chance Decker is causing to the Enterprise, he switches to "Commodore" when telling him to give command back to Spock. Afterwards, starting with "Matt, you'll exist killed," he goes back to his friend'southward start name, begging him not to kamikaze the planet killer.
  • Decker also does this. When he'southward outset found, he calls Kirk "Jim." After, though, after taking command of the Enterprise, he calls him "Kirk" or "Captain."
• Forced to Lookout: A big part of why Commodore Decker is so traumatized; non but did he beam his crew onto a planet in the machine'south path, just he had to heed to them die from his crippled ship.

  Decker: They called me, they begged me for help, four hundred of them! I couldn't! I-I couldn't! (breaks down in tears)

• General Ripper: Commodore Decker. His goal is fine, simply his methods are suicidal... literally, every bit it turned out.
• Generic Doomsday Villain: A giant cone mindlessly bent on planetary destruction spinning around in space like a forgotten country mine.
• Ghost Extras:
  • Ane of the virtually decisive aversions of this trope in franchise history. Throughout the episode, as the power struggle between Spock and Decker escalates, the photographic camera routinely cuts to the reactions of the coiffure members in the "groundwork." None of them have whatever dialogue, only their facial expressions speak volumes.
  • When Spock accepts Kirk's order to relieve Decker of duty and assume command of the Enterprise, Decker (knowing that neither Kirk nor Spock have the authorization to salvage him) resists. But then Spock silently gestures to the security redshirts stationed by the turbolift, and they accelerate frontwards — ready to subdue Decker by force if necessary, proving that the crew of the ship is backside Spock and will dorsum his play. Spock could take very hands nerve-pinched Decker if he hadn't cooperated, so Spock is going out of his manner to demonstrate how of import their support (or lack thereof) is in the power struggle.
    • Actually, Kirk does have the authorisation to society Spock to save Decker. He's the Captain of the Enterprise and Decker doesn't have the grounds to relieve him. Decker's plan of attacking the Planet Killer was doomed to failure, Kirk himself was stunned to run across that the Enterprise was attacking something he knew their weapons couldn't scratch, Spock had to threaten Decker with being relieved for attempting suicide if he didn't break off the attack, the Chief Medical Officer is right on the span observing all this (as is the unabridged bridge crew), and he's been repeatedly informed the Enterprise'south weapons are useless against the Planet-Killer. If he had survived and tried to bring charges against Kirk and Spock, it wouldn't have gone far. A senior Admiral at Star Armada would accept quietly advised him to drib the whole thing and retire, or face losing everything in a court-martial.
• Going Down with the Send: Decker intended to do this. Tragically, however, the planet killer wasn't interested in his ship, so his entire crew was killed while he lived. Decker ends up going down with a shuttlecraft after on.
• Hand Signals: One of the reasons Decker realizes he is fighting a losing battle asserting his say-so on the ship is when Spock only has to brand a hand gesture and the bridge'due south security officers eagerly step forward for the give-and-take to drag the Commodore out.
• Heroic BSoD: Decker is in the midst of one when he's found on board the Constellation. He has another, major one when he makes his suicide run at the planet killer.
• Idiot Ball:
  • No i considers firing into the obvious weak point of the planet killer until Decker completely loses information technology and flies a shuttle into information technology, revealing the weakness. Of class, this is equivalent to firing down the barrel of a gun and hoping not to be shot, but information technology's not like they had many options, especially when it had them in a tractor axle. Star Trek Online actually went with this road, only the histrion can just cause damage with special, high-powered weapons, not their standard loadout (and "firing down the butt of a planet-killing gun" is exactly as unsafe as it sounds; when the Doomsday Machine charges its weapon, you lot have a very short fourth dimension to go your send articulate or die when the weapon fires).
  • 1 that happens offscreen is Decker's initial decision to accept the coiffure evacuate to a planet. It was cut up a planet when the Constellation found it, so they should have considered it would continue doing so. Instead, he fails to consider it would go right back to what it was doing before it engaged his ship, and his entire crew is killed equally a result.
• I'1000 a Doc, Not a Placeholder:

  Kirk: Bones, have you lot ever heard of the Doomsday Motorcar?
  Bones: No, I'g a physician, not a mechanic.

• Irrevocable Order: Once the self-destruct on the Constellation is triggered, in that location's no stopping it (apparently because of the send's damaged condition, with the engines already on the border of blowing up without whatsoever actress nudge in that direction). This causes some consternation when the Enterprise transporters pick a bad fourth dimension to get offline.
• It'due south Personal: Decker takes the destruction of the crew of the Constellation very personally.
• Jerkass Has a Betoken: Decker argues that running to warn Starfleet from the planet killer will let it to destroy more defenseless planets. Nobody denies this, the problem is that his insistence on attacking the planet killer will get the Enterprise destroyed for nothing.
• The Juggernaut: The planet killer is indestructible; repeated attacks past the Enterprise can't scratch it.
• Big Ham: William Windom thought the story was ridiculous and purposely overacted, non realizing he was supposed to exist channeling Captain Ahab. Ironically, he wound upwardly giving what is widely regarded as one of the greatest and nearly memorable performances of his career. He came to appreciate the irony of this in his later life, and he even reprised the role of Decker for Star Trek: New Voyages.
• Leitmotif: Interestingly enough, the episode'south score is based on the technology instead of the characters. The planet killer, the Constellation, even the transporter all have their ain themes.
• Ludicrous Precision: Spock, equally usual.

  Kirk: Am I correct in bold that a fusion explosion of 97 megatons will event if a starship impulse engine is overloaded?
  Spock: No, sir. 97.835 megatons.

• Made of Indestructium: The planet killer's hull is composed of neutronium, which is the super-compressed material that makes up neutron stars (to give an idea of how dense information technology is, a matchbox-sized amount of neutronium weighs half-dozen one thousand thousand tons). This allows it to easily shrug off everything both the Constellation and the Enterprise throw at it from the outside. Even the self destruct of the Constellation, which does stop the auto, only works considering its more than vulnerable internal systems are destroyed. The hull isn't scratched.
• Made of Atomic number 26: The Constellation is able to move, maneuver, and set on subsequently some TLC from Scotty, fifty-fifty with ane nacelle blown in half and holes all over its construction.
• Mechanical Anathema: The planet killer. Let'due south see, information technology'south very erstwhile, its origins and motives are unknown (Kirk'due south speculations about it existence a doomsday motorcar not withstanding), information technology'southward virtually indestructible, and is capable of generating a jamming field preventing the Enterprise and Constellation from calling for help. Decker notes they're not even sure whether it's a living organism or a machine. Or both.
• Mega-Maw Maneuver: Inverted. The Constellation deliberately flies into the planet killer'south maw, rather than the other fashion around.
• Moby Schtick: One of the primeval examples in Trek, starting a recurring tendency. Kirk, Khan and Picard all autumn prey to the vengeance trend started past Decker. Still, this particular incident was resolved when Kirk straight ordered Spock to to remove Decker from command before his reckless vindictiveness destroyed the USS Enterprise.
• My Greatest Failure: Decker sees the expiry of the Constellation's crew as a failure on his part, and very virtually puts the Enterprise in the same peril.
• Nice Job Breaking Information technology, Hero: Decker got his entire crew killed in a well-pregnant just poorly thought out effort to salvage their lives by beaming them to the nearest planet, that beingness the next i in the planet killer's path. Had he only washed nothing, most if not all of his crew would even so be alive.
• Off-the-Shelf FX: The show'south budget wouldn't stretch to edifice a model of the Constellation at the aforementioned level of item as the Enterprise (since, unlike the Enterprise, they couldn't spread the cost out by reusing information technology in other episodes), so the damaged Constellation was represented by a shop-bought Enterprise model with the series number stickers applied in a different order. Averted in the remastered version, wherein the CGI of the Constellation has quite detailed boxing impairment.
• Oh, Crap!: Kirk, thanks to Scotty, manages to become the wrecked USS Constellation to move and burn on the planet killer before it swallows the Enterprise, unfortunately...

  Kirk: Mister Scott, it worked. Great.
  (sees the planet killer is now turning towards his send)
  Kirk: I think it'due south neat. Scotty, get us out of here.

• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Scotty loses his brogue for a sentence when he'due south telling Kirk how to detonate the Constellation.
• Orchestral Bombing: Sol Kaplan'southward dramatic and thrilling score for this episode was so effective, it would exist tracked into many later episodes of the show's 2nd season.
• Planet Looters: The titular Doomsday Machine smashes and eats unabridged planets for fuel.
• Playing Ill: Inverted when Decker insists he's competent to command a starship when he is clearly mentally unbalanced. Played straight when he fakes a coughing just before slugging Lt. Montgomery while being escorted to ill bay.
• Precision F-Strike: Opposite to popular conventionalities, never once on the TV series did Bones say "Dammit, Jim, I'm a doctor, non a 10!" (In this ep, for example, he says "No, I'chiliad a doctor, not a mechanic.") Laws well-nigh swearing on Telly were strictly enforced at the time. However, Decker does manage to slip in a "Hell" when comparison the auto to a devil.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Decker vs. the planet killer.
• Reverse Polarity: What finally gets the transporter to work properly after malfunctioning for the whole episode is when Spock tells Scotty to try something called "inverse phasing". This is reversing the polarity with help from a thesaurus.
• Sacrificial Planet: The titular weapon has already annihilated a solar organization and all but ii planets of another past the fourth dimension the Enterprise gets on the scene. It's attack a course through the well-nigh densely populated department of the galaxy to sustain itself.
• Scenery Gorn: The damaged USS Constellation.
• Scifi Writers Accept No Sense Of Calibration:
  • In the real world, a 97-megaton explosion would exist much more powerful.
  • The planet killer size, as depicted relative to the Constellation, is nowhere well-nigh sufficient to contain the mass of a single planet, much less the multiple planets information technology does eat/would take eaten. Either information technology converts all that mass to energy at an amazing rate, or leaves far more than debris than we run into.
    • Nowhere in the episode is it stated that the planet killer ingests the entire shattered planet, only that it digests the droppings for fuel. One time the machine has taken in a sufficient corporeality of textile it moves on.
• Screw the Rules, I Brand Them!: Capt. Kirk finally has to utilise this trope past invoking his personal authority as ship's captain to get Mr. Spock to resume control of the Enterprise from Commodore Decker, who is doing his Moby Schtick. Of course, Kirk would have liked his chances facing a Lath of Inquiry about this move, considering he would be arguing against a Commodore who impetuously attacked an unstoppable Juggernaut when he should have been escaping the planet killer's jamming field to warning Starfleet Command.
• Senseless Sacrifice: Subverted, actually. Decker actually shouldn't have had to sacrifice himself to the machine. But the method did stop upwards revealing a weakness they could use to destroy the car. And really, there would have been no other more satisfying manner of rounding up his emotional arc.
• Sequel Hook: The episode ends with Spock and Kirk wondering if there are whatsoever more planet-killers out there. A sequel to this episode has never been produced; Harve Bennett passed it over when looking for potential follow-upwards stories for the second Star Trek movie in favor of "Space Seed". The pop Fan Film serial Star Trek: New Voyages did a sequel of sorts to this episode (and "The Urban center on the Edge of Forever", and "The Menagerie", among others) in their offset proper episode, "In Harm's Style".
  • That said, the Star Trek: The Next Generation novel "Vendetta" was basically a sequel to this episode when the Enterprise-D has to deal with someone discovering an upgraded version of the doomsday auto, which also confirms that the machine was intended as a weapon against the Borg. Later novels would re-introduce the original Doomsday Auto and also characteristic the discovery of a 'proto-prototype' (a more primitive version of the auto featured here).
• Shout-Out: William Windom had Decker compulsively twiddle with cassette cartridges in his hand as an homage to Humphrey Bogart, who did the aforementioned affair with brawl-bearings equally Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny.
• Stating the Uncomplicated Solution: Information technology was cut for time, but at the end, Spock notes that all Starfleet might have to exercise if another planet killer appears is to get an asteroid, hollow it out, stuff information technology total of photon torpedoes, then toss information technology into the planet killer'due south path and expect for the smash.
• Stock Footage: A shot of Scotty tossed around in engineering is recycled from "Tomorrow is Yesterday". His equipment bag disappears in this shot.
• Suicide Mission: Decker wants that auto destroyed at any cost, even his ain life.
• Survivor Guilt: Poor Decker has a horrible case of this.
• Talking Downwards the Suicidal: Kirk and Spock endeavor to finish Decker from flight into the planet killer's maw. They fail.

  Spock: Commodore, I must insist that y'all return to the ship.
  Decker: You said it yourself, Spock. There is no way to nail through the hull of that auto, so I'm going to have this thing correct down its pharynx.
  Kirk: This is Kirk. Matt, you'll be killed.
  Decker: I've been prepared for decease ever since I...always since I killed my crew.
  Kirk: No 1 expects you to dice for an error in judgment.
  Decker: The commander is responsible for the lives of his coiffure, and for their deaths. Well, I should have died with mine.
  Spock: You lot cannot succeed, Commodore. Your only logical alternative is to return to the ship.
  Kirk: Matt. Matt, listen to me. Y'all tin't throw your life away similar this. Matt, yous're a starship commander. That makes you lot a valuable article. We need you lot, your experience, your judgment! Matt! We're stronger with yous than without you!

• Temporary Substitute: Uhura doesn't appear in this episode, her duties causeless by Lt. Palmer, played by Elizabeth Rogers.
• Tuckerization: Russ and Elliott are named afterward banana directors Rusty Meek and Elliot Schick.
• Moving ridge-Motion Gun: The planet killer's antiproton particle beam used to slice upwards planets for consumption and assault the starships.
• Weapon of Mass Destruction: The planet killer, hence Kirk's reference to "the Doomsday Machine" — an allusion to a popular 1960s term for thermonuclear warheads (or "the H-flop"), every bit he himself points out.
• We Need a Distraction: Kirk uses the Constellation to divert the planet-killer from moving in on the Enterprise.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Spock calls Kirk, not "Captain" but "Jim" when he protests his plan to destroy the machine.

  Spock: Captain, you're getting dangerously close to the planet killer.
  Kirk: I intend to get a lot closer. I'm going to ram her correct down that thing's throat.
  Spock: (stands upwardly straight) Jim, yous'll exist killed, just similar Decker.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Recap/StarTrekS2E6TheDoomsdayMachine

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