Put a Computer in Charge of the Ship? That NEVER Works!

Well, actually, putting a computer in charge of a ship did work at least once. Sort of.

As I've written before, the 1964-68 television series Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea was very hit-and-miss in terms of quality during its three color seasons. I acknowledge in that old post that the first black-and-white season was the best, but until I started methodically watching it when it became available to stream, I don't think I appreciated just how good it was.

Once or twice a month (I don't believe in binge-watching), I pull up the next first-season episode and watch it. I've thus been enjoying stories that mix science fiction with Cold War espionage which, along with some really cool production design work and a strong cast, resulted in some excellent drama.

I just finished watching "The Human Computer," which first aired on February 15, 1965. In this one, the Seaview is being used to test a new super-computer that can supposedly run the submarine efficiently even with no crew aboard. To test this, the Seaview will participate in war games, with other naval ships hunting her.

This premise will ring a bell with Star Trek geeks, of course. I'll get to that in a moment.

Over the years, science fiction has trained us to be distrustful of super computers. Whether we're talking about HAL, Skynet, Westworld, or WOPR/Jason, if you put a computer in charge, it will inevitably start murdering all us puny humans.

"The Human Computer," though, is an exception to this. The computer works fine, dodging all efforts by the Navy to pretend-destroy her and not once trying to kill anyone despite presumably having control of a nuclear arsenal.

It's a human being that causes all the trouble. Captain Crane is on the ship alone during the war game maneuvers. Or he's supposed to be alone. An enemy agent (implicitly a Russian, though never overtly identified as one) is also on board. His job is to kill Crane in a way that looks like an accident, then reprogram the computer to take the sub to his home country. The Russians will study the computer to get its secrets, then give the sub back to the U.S. with their regrets that Crane died in a tragic mishap and that the darn computer apparently took the sub off course.

David Hedison, as Crane, gives an excellent performance in this episode. At first he's clearly antsy about being on the sub alone without anything useful to do. When he realizes there's an intruder aboard, there's an tense, extended sequence with virtually no dialogue in which the two men stalk each other through the submarine, with Crane frightened and on edge without ever losing command of himself. Hedison does wonders to ground Crane in believable humanity from start to finish.

The spy eventually traps Crane in the ballast room, blocking off the one exit and knowing the only other hatch leads to a tank full of water. He does not count on Crane's ingenuity and superior knowledge of the ship  to find a way out and get the drop on him.

Heck, the episode even stays aware of the fact that the pistol Crane carries only has eight shots, using this as an important plot point. (Though one can armchair-quarterback Crane and criticize him for not grabbing extra ammo when he had a chance.)

The starship Enterprise put a computer in charge in "The Ultimate Computer," which aired on March 8, 1968. This time, the story follows the expected direction--the computer starts blowing up other ships and won't relinquish command of the Enterprise back to the humans. A poor Red Shirt is fried by a power beam when Kirk and crew try to manually disconnect it.

William Marshall gives a superb performance as the increasingly unstable designer of the computer and the overall storytelling is strong. Kirk eventually defeats the computer by talking it to death via twisting its own logic back on itself. This is something Kirk did a lot--using that tactic in a total of four episodes. It is fair to say that this was an overused plot device, but it is also fair to note that the individual episodes in which Kirk does this are often pretty good ones."The Ultimate Computer" is arguably the best of the "talk the computer to death" episodes.

So what do we learn from all this? Primarily that it's okay to put a computer in charge of a submarine but not a starship. But we also learn that the same basic premise for a story can be used by different storytellers to go off in many, equally viable directions with their stories.

By the way, this is the second time I found a reason to compare a specific Voyage episode with a specific Star Trek episode. Here's the first time.