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DVDs
Star Trek: The Original Series Season One DVD set
[USA] [Canada] [France] [UK] [Germany]
Episode Title: "THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KING"
Production Number: 13
Original Air Date: 12-08-66
Stardates: 2817.6, [2794.7], 2818.9, 2819.8, [2825.3]

Synopsis: Captain Kirk and the U.S.S. Enterprise are diverted to Planet Q, to meet Dr. Thomas Leighton, who claims to have discovered a new synthetic food that would end the threat of famine on Signia Minor, a nearby Earth colony, but when they arrive, Kirk learns that Leighton lured the Enterprise there because he recognized an actor in a touring troupe as former Governor Kodos of Tarsus Four -- also known as Kodos the Executioner -- who butchered over four thousand people and has been assumed dead for years.

Twenty years ago on Earth colony Tarsus Four, home to over eight thousand colonists, the food supply was destroyed by an exotic fungus. Governor Kodos declared martial law, and separated the colonists; half would live and share the remaining food, and the rest were immediately put to death. When Earth forces arrived, a burned body was found and assumed to be Kodos, and the case was closed.

Now Dr. Leighton believes Kodos has assumed the identity of Anton Karidian, director and star of a travelling company of actors sponsored by the Galactic Cultural Exchange Project, touring official installations over the last nine years, along with his nineteen-year-old daughter, Lenore Karidian.

After he finds Dr. Leighton murdered, Captain Kirk contacts Captain John Daley of the Astral Queen, the starship transporting the actors, and asks Daley not to pick them up. Kirk then offers to transport the actors to their next performance at the Benecia Colony, while secretly researching the identity of Anton Karidian.

Kirk learns that of the Tarsus Four survivors, there were nine eyewitnesses who could identify Kodos, including Kirk, Dr. Leighton, E. Moulton, D. Eames, and Lt. Kevin Riley, who is assigned to the U.S.S. Enterprise Communications section. All but Kirk and Riley have been killed, and after someone tries to poison Riley and sets a phaser on overload in Kirk's quarters, Kirk confronts Karidian, but eventually learns that Karidian's daughter, Lenore, has killed the seven witnesses, trying to protect her father from his past. When Lenore tries to shoot Kirk, she accidentally kills her father, then suffers a mental breakdown, remembering nothing.

  • Factoid: The Enterprise will arrive at the Benecia Colony on Stardate 2825.3, approximately 15:00 Benecia time.

  • Dr. McCoy: "Would you care for a drink, Mr. Spock?"
  • Spock: "My father's race was spared the dubious benefits of alcohol."
  • Dr. McCoy: "Oh. Now I know why they were conquered."

  • Guest Characters: Lt. Kevin Riley, Lt. Leslie
    Alien Races:
    Starships:

    KEY: [brackets]=illusions   *star=first appearance

     
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