TOS - The Squire of Gothos

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Q has been shown to go back to before the Big Bang... Trelane has not been shown to do this and is essentially a child, while Q can be childlike, but is most assuredly not (even ignoring "The Q and the Grey").

That's just because they didn't have the budget back in the day.

[Beastro]

Gene seemed keen on demystifying the godlike entity pretty in his stories; with the being in question shown as being fraudulent or in the mortal man opposing and/or standing up to the figure in question. "The God Thing" treatment is basically the TOS/TNG platitude of "we have have outgrown the need for gods" in a proto-TMP story.

Some of his comments indirectly reveal more, at least to me. Like an interview asking him about his opinion on Mankind and replying that we're sort of stuck in between animals and the divine. No, I don't take that as an admission of any belief on his part but it shows he has a mind to something "divine" that is more than just something requiring demystification.

Roddenberry may not have seen Man "as made in the image of God", but enough was there to think there was something more that was special.

[Yukaphile]

You assume they would head back to the Big Bang even if they had the budget. That didn't stop Doctor Who in that short serial "The Edge of Destruction."

[Deledrius]

Some of his comments indirectly reveal more, at least to me. Like an interview asking him about his opinion on Mankind and replying that we're sort of stuck in between animals and the divine. No, I don't take that as an admission of any belief on his part but it shows he has a mind to something "divine" that is more than just something requiring demystification.

Roddenberry may not have seen Man "as made in the image of God", but enough was there to think there was something more that was special.

That reminds me of Terry Pratchett's line he gave to Death in The Hogfather: "HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE."

There's something special to be found in the contradiction of dichotomy. A failure of the divine, and the aspirations of the lowly, all in one creature.

[Yukaphile]

I think the future will get better, assuming we don't kill ourselves, but divine? We will never be that. He himself is proof. Because the future will be shaped by the potential we all have right here in the present.

[Alex]

[...] the obsession Trelane had with Earth is kinda annoying both because there are probably far more warlike species (if he just wants a straight warrior culture he'd probably love the Klingons or Hirogen more then humanity [...] and plays into the TOS problem of Earth being special. [...]

According to my "head canon," Trelane apparently having a fascination with war-like Earth and having studied Earth for "some time" merely means that, as a nigh god-like being, about 2 milliseconds ago, when the Enterprise was passing by his "space," Trelane abruptly dropped his millennia-old hobby of studying the mating rituals of the many-tentacled "Kelvan" of the Andromeda Galaxy ("That Which We Call a Rose") and quickly discovered a new passion. In other words, until then, Trelane had never given Earth more than a passing thought. But when the Enterprise neared his planet, Trelane quickly adapted and "got up to speed."
Trelane is a super-being, with an entirely different scale of time and consciousness. 20 milliseconds after the conclusion of the show, he was engrossed in studying some other alien species.