10 Dumbest Things in Star Trek The Original Series

And speaking of tired repetition… there’s this classic trope. Over the course of the series Kirk caused the utter destruction of several overzealous computers and the disabling and reprogramming of two others.

Kirk takes the direct approach a few times and blows up the war computers on Eminiar 7 in “A Taste of Armageddon,” and has the Enterprise phaser blast Vaal in “The Apple”. He tries this phaser tactic on the Landru computer in “The Return of the Archons” but, when thwarted, talks it into self-immolation. He repeats his talk-it-to-death trick on the M-5 supercomputer and Nomad space probe in “The Ultimate Computer” and “The Changeling,” respectively. He confuses the imperfect androids in "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" resulting in them destroying one another. He and the crew also pull a “melt ‘em down with illogic” variation on the androids of “I Mudd,” and especially the CPU-like "Norman," but didn’t destroy them in the process, for a change.

The only time he doesn’t try the phaser-it or talk-it-to-death approach is with the Oracle of the People of “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky,” which Spock manages to turn off and fix. 

It took until The Motion Picture for Kirk to meet a computer he couldn’t overwhelm or outsmart, which was about 12 years late.