Until J and I re-watched, I had actually forgotten the part of "The Ultimate Computer" where they realize that every time M-5 "responds" to a question, it requires such an increase of power that it starts draining power from the entirely residential decks of the ship.
This is allegedly fine because the crew that normally live there have been removed to the local starbase and no one is actually there at the time, so the living areas are the "safest" place to draw power from, and M-5 represents a future where large amounts of space for actual people to live won't be needed as it will be doing their jobs. They'll be "freed" to do ... something else, this isn't clear, but it's definitely the inexorable wave of the future (for some reason) and that makes it good (for some reason) and resisting only means you'll be uselessly left behind (and that's... also supposed to be a selling point?).
M-5, incidentally, considers not just Kirk but McCoy to be nonessential personnel with regards to missions for multiple other living people, so the idea that it's really prioritizing life is sketchy even before it needlessly kills hundreds of people. But the detail that it specifically fucks with the residential areas to answer questions and the power grid keeps flickering is... well. Okay.
There are also some great speeches, including the beloved one from Spock, but I think the one that best encapsulates the core of the episode is ultimately a three-word sentence from Kirk:
DAYSTROM: As the unit is called upon to do more work, it pulls more power to enable it to do what is required of it, just as the human body draws more energy to run than to stand still.
SPOCK: Doctor, this unit is not a human body. The computer can process information, but only the information which is put into it.
KIRK: Granted, it can work a thousand, a million times faster than the human brain, but it can't make a value judgment. It hasn't intuition. It can't think.
Sometimes, TOS feels painfully of its time. And sometimes, it feels painfully of ours.
