The use of Shakespearean motifs in the original series is hardly unique, but The Conscience of the King is perhaps the best use of the metaphor, with Shatner making Kirk an impressive quasi-Hamlet.
The episode begins with Kirk and old friend Thomas Leighton watching a performance of Macbeth, and the friend telling Kirk that lead actor Anton Karidian is, in fact, Kodos the Executioner, who massacred several thousand colonists decades earlier. Because Kirk and Leighton are two of only nine witnesses who could positively identify Kodos, Leighton asks for Kirk's help in proving the case. Kirk is dubious, but when Leighton is murdered, Kirk takes it upon himself to make the determination of whether Karidian is guilty of these crimes.
To my mind, Hamlet is often misinterpreted as a play about, as Olivier stated in his Oscar-winning adaptation, a man who could not make up his mind -- in fact, it is a play about an intelligent, well-educated and sophisticated man who must have definitive proof of guilt before reaching judgment and imposing justice (and, by the time he does have it, he is unable to impose true justice until the climax of the play). "The Conscience of the King" follows this same pattern, with Kirk taking on the Hamlet role, Karidian as Claudius, his daughter as Ophelia, and (ironically) Spock bouncing between Polonius and Horatio (though McCoy also fills the latter role part of the time).
The result is fairly impressive. Barry Trivers' script nicely parallels the Enterprise's crew with the court at Elsinore, and creates some nicely suspenseful moments, and Gerd Oswald's direction shows that he knows exactly how far to go with the theatricality of the story, without making it visually static (one nice touch is the shot of Karidian, just before Kirk meets with him, standing behind a screen that looks eerily like a confessional, mirroring Claudius' confession in Act III, Sc. IV).
As for the performances, Shatner provides a nuanced and shaded performance, balancing his primal need for justice/revenge with the doubts presented by what is, at best, sketchy evidence -- it's a dynamic the series repeated several times, but rarely so well (thanks in large part to the best dramatic template of this type of conflict ever written). As Karidian, Arnold Moss is excellent, being given the chance to show off his Shakespearean chops, while at the same time being given a complicated moral conundrum to underline his backstory -- a conflict that he uses to optimal effect. Nimoy and Kelley are also strong in their respective roles in this drama, and Bruce Hyde is given some nice moments in repeating his role as Kevin Reilly (from "The Naked Time"), as another witness to Kodos' horrors.
If there is one weakness, it is Barbara Anderson's performance as Karidian's daughter and co-star, though to be fair, whether it is her or the script is hard to know. She is presented two-dimensionally, which makes the finale far less effective that it could have been. As a result, an episode that could have ranked with the top five of the series instead ranks as one of the top ten.
Well worth the time.
The episode begins with Kirk and old friend Thomas Leighton watching a performance of Macbeth, and the friend telling Kirk that lead actor Anton Karidian is, in fact, Kodos the Executioner, who massacred several thousand colonists decades earlier. Because Kirk and Leighton are two of only nine witnesses who could positively identify Kodos, Leighton asks for Kirk's help in proving the case. Kirk is dubious, but when Leighton is murdered, Kirk takes it upon himself to make the determination of whether Karidian is guilty of these crimes.
To my mind, Hamlet is often misinterpreted as a play about, as Olivier stated in his Oscar-winning adaptation, a man who could not make up his mind -- in fact, it is a play about an intelligent, well-educated and sophisticated man who must have definitive proof of guilt before reaching judgment and imposing justice (and, by the time he does have it, he is unable to impose true justice until the climax of the play). "The Conscience of the King" follows this same pattern, with Kirk taking on the Hamlet role, Karidian as Claudius, his daughter as Ophelia, and (ironically) Spock bouncing between Polonius and Horatio (though McCoy also fills the latter role part of the time).
The result is fairly impressive. Barry Trivers' script nicely parallels the Enterprise's crew with the court at Elsinore, and creates some nicely suspenseful moments, and Gerd Oswald's direction shows that he knows exactly how far to go with the theatricality of the story, without making it visually static (one nice touch is the shot of Karidian, just before Kirk meets with him, standing behind a screen that looks eerily like a confessional, mirroring Claudius' confession in Act III, Sc. IV).
As for the performances, Shatner provides a nuanced and shaded performance, balancing his primal need for justice/revenge with the doubts presented by what is, at best, sketchy evidence -- it's a dynamic the series repeated several times, but rarely so well (thanks in large part to the best dramatic template of this type of conflict ever written). As Karidian, Arnold Moss is excellent, being given the chance to show off his Shakespearean chops, while at the same time being given a complicated moral conundrum to underline his backstory -- a conflict that he uses to optimal effect. Nimoy and Kelley are also strong in their respective roles in this drama, and Bruce Hyde is given some nice moments in repeating his role as Kevin Reilly (from "The Naked Time"), as another witness to Kodos' horrors.
If there is one weakness, it is Barbara Anderson's performance as Karidian's daughter and co-star, though to be fair, whether it is her or the script is hard to know. She is presented two-dimensionally, which makes the finale far less effective that it could have been. As a result, an episode that could have ranked with the top five of the series instead ranks as one of the top ten.
Well worth the time.