TOS - Who Mourns for Adonais?

[clearspira]

Come on guys. Chuck asked for thirty pages. We need to argue more.

Personally I felt they had written a few interesting threads. Like the other gods letting go and dissipating. To the part where Apollo left some progeny behind. It would have been interesting for the grandchild of Apollo to meet a Q for example.

We have another ''Miri'' here whereby Gene raises an epic question with far reaching implications... and then forgets about it. THE GREEK GODS are real ffs. I would argue very much for the Ancient Greeks being the most important civilization in human history - or at the very least, the most important of Western history. So much of our world today can be traced back to them. Architecture, stories, art, culture, language, systems of government, wars that led to other great nations rising and falling. And here we are, face to face with Apollo, and we get worse than nothing. A villain of the week with no follow up.

The other really big example of this I can think of is learning that Leonardo Da Vinci is a Highlander. And that episode ends with him now being some loner who is trying to perfect a line of robot sex dolls and Kirk warping off into the sunset promising to keeping it secret that he exists - a promise that he then goes onto to break according to Janeway. Real amazing stuff.

[bronnt]

And after about half a dozen literal god encounters on TOS, and then the Godlike V'ger in the movie, the pilot of TNG introduced a new god-like entity. And Picard's plea that humanity has grown beyond their base cruelty is pretty much the same stuff we got from Kirk in TOS at various points.

Then there's another godlike entity in "Justice." The issue there is resolved by having the captain give yet another speech at it. Then we get the crystalline entity in "Datalore," but that wasn't really something the crew had to deal with, just another super powerful entity. Then we get to "Skin of Evil," where they encounter another superpowered entity and Picard makes a speech at it.

But a decision that might have saved TNG was the idea of "Hey, what if, instead of introducing a string of these godlike entities, we just bring one of them back when we want to tell that kind of story?" So they brought Q back to toy with them a bit.

It does make you wonder how anyone in space travel gets anything done when ships named "Enterprise" are constantly bumping into godlike entities, though. How many other ships had to deal with gods that we never saw?

[Taurian Patriot]

It was actually the human-centric speech Kirk gave Palamas always bothered me a little...

We're the same. We share the same history, the same heritage, the same lives. We're tied together beyond any untying. Man or woman, it makes no difference. We're human. We couldn't escape from each other even if we wanted to. That's how you do it, Lieutenant. By remembering who and what you are. A bit of flesh and blood afloat in a universe without end. The only thing that's truly yours is the rest of humanity. That's where our duty lies.

That suggests more duty to Khan than Sarek. If a human mugger starts beating up an Andorian grandmother to steal her purse, whom does Kirk space-karate-chop? I won't go into parallels used by unsavory people through time to say your loyalty is to "your own kind" as unnecessarily inflammatory.

And maybe I'm being too literal. Again.

Heh, maybe. After all, if that human is being a serious asshole, is it not your duty to represent the best of the species by administering space karate justice?

Likewise, I wasn't bothered by Kirk's "just the one" either. Even in the last thousand years or so, some form of monotheism has taken over much of humanity (Christianity and Islam account for more than half the current population), and I don't think that'll change too quickly, even if most spiritual belief becomes vague and agnostic. And if the Hindus I know are any indication (most are second-generation American, for what it's worth), even those who practice their faith seriously still tend to think of the gods as anthropomorphic representations of vast cosmic forces rather than actual beings. It's not uncommon to hear one refer simply to "god" in a general sense in a serious talk about faith.

No, what bothered me about this episode was Scotty. I watched this a couple weeks back for the first time in probably decades, and Scotty was just embarrassing. Getting a silly crush on someone is fine, but acting like a jealous fourteen-year-old is something I'd hope a Starfleet chief engineer would have grown out of.

On the bright side, his repeated ass-kickings made me think of Welshy from Futurama's Trek-spoof episode. That's always good for a smile.

[TGLS]

Well, I think lumping the crystalline entity and the goo pile in with Q and the Justice god is a bit much.

Between things like Miri, The Omega Glory, and this, I really put a big asterisk on pre-Movie Trek for canon.

[Link8909]

Come on guys. Chuck asked for thirty pages. We need to argue more.

Personally I felt they had written a few interesting threads. Like the other gods letting go and dissipating. To the part where Apollo left some progeny behind. It would have been interesting for the grandchild of Apollo to meet a Q for example.

That actually did happen in the Star Trek New Frontier novels, it was one the stories in the book Renaissance.

We have another ''Miri'' here whereby Gene raises an epic question with far reaching implications... and then forgets about it. THE GREEK GODS are real ffs. I would argue very much for the Ancient Greeks being the most important civilization in human history - or at the very least, the most important of Western history. So much of our world today can be traced back to them. Architecture, stories, art, culture, language, systems of government, wars that led to other great nations rising and falling. And here we are, face to face with Apollo, and we get worse than nothing. A villain of the week with no follow up.

The other really big example of this I can think of is learning that Leonardo Da Vinci is a Highlander. And that episode ends with him now being some loner who is trying to perfect a line of robot sex dolls and Kirk warping off into the sunset promising to keeping it secret that he exists - a promise that he then goes onto to break according to Janeway. Real amazing stuff.

Yeah, and not just Gods and Lovecraftian alien creatures like the Crystal Entity, but also the details of how such a utopia like the Federation would work, Gene Roddenberry often has great ideas, but doesn't really explain how it would work, it's like answering a question without writing down the method.

[Zunvect]

One obvious problem with these Ancient Astronaut gods in Star Trek is: why are they fixated on humanity, when there are any number of primitive humanoid civilizations scattered across the galaxy who would happily worship them and do orgies as needed. Why weren't they good enough for Apollo and company? Being a bit too picky if you ask me.

Maybe the first set of god-stronauts showed up and had such a good time that they spread the word. Humans are the low-risk, high-entertainment species. The space deities might be on the cautious side given that the Klingons successfully killed their gods in ancient times. I imagine the Cardassians might still have theirs in jail.

[Hero_Of_Shadows]

No, what bothered me about this episode was Scotty. I watched this a couple weeks back for the first time in probably decades, and Scotty was just embarrassing. Getting a silly crush on someone is fine, but acting like a jealous fourteen-year-old is something I'd hope a Starfleet chief engineer would have grown out of.

Well TOS is episodic that severely limits the romance related plots it can do as it's been noted in several reviews.

If the format was more episodic and the creators had more time the same story could have been something like:

We see Scotty interract with the lt. a bit in every episode they're getting closer and closer, it's obvious that there's a a mutual attraction here.

The audience is invested in the relationship between Scotty and Palamas when the fateful away mission happens.

They are captured by a powerful alien with which Palamas needs to interact with very often as she is the expert in this case, but the being is clearly using the love she has for her field of study to worm it's way into her good graces.

For Kirk and the other senior officers it's clearly the alien using it's powers to subvert one of their fellow crewmen, not that of an unusual scenario but for Scotty it's the woman he thinks he loves and who he thought loved him back.

It's a tragedy on a completely different level and he has to watch it play out before his very eyes, every valiant effort he puts in to defend her gets defeated by supernatural powers.

If we only look at what is presented on screen yes it's crush + Scotty is jealous, but from a RL perspective they couldn't have prepared something more involved due to the nature of the show and for an in-universe perspective I think Scotty himself mentioned that the "documentary footage" didn't show everything.

So this is my defense of Scotty being jealous I hope these buys us at least 5 pages.

And for some extra pages remember the short trek with Edward Larkin and the tribbles ? I'm playing a ST video game and they're doing a short story/"campaign" with Larkin and in-game he's the "villain".

[Taurian Patriot]

Maybe the first set of god-stronauts showed up and had such a good time that they spread the word. Humans are the low-risk, high-entertainment species. The space deities might be on the cautious side given that the Klingons successfully killed their gods in ancient times. I imagine the Cardassians might still have theirs in jail.

And they probably would have bailed out on the Ferengi after being relentlessly cheapened and merchandised on everything, Spaceballs-style.

[Link8909]

We have another ''Miri'' here whereby Gene raises an epic question with far reaching implications... and then forgets about it. THE GREEK GODS are real ffs. I would argue very much for the Ancient Greeks being the most important civilization in human history - or at the very least, the most important of Western history. So much of our world today can be traced back to them. Architecture, stories, art, culture, language, systems of government, wars that led to other great nations rising and falling. And here we are, face to face with Apollo, and we get worse than nothing. A villain of the week with no follow up.

The other really big example of this I can think of is learning that Leonardo Da Vinci is a Highlander. And that episode ends with him now being some loner who is trying to perfect a line of robot sex dolls and Kirk warping off into the sunset promising to keeping it secret that he exists - a promise that he then goes onto to break according to Janeway. Real amazing stuff.

Yeah, and not just Gods and Lovecraftian alien creatures like the Crystal Entity, but also the details of how such a utopia like the Federation would work, Gene Roddenberry often has great ideas, but doesn't really explain how it would work, it's like answering a question without writing down the method.

Thinking about it more and want to add to this, and it's worldbuilding that Gene Roddenberry had problems with, often in The Original Series anything new that we learn about the Star Trek universe like the Vulcans in "Amok Time" or people like Zefram Cochrane in "Metamorphosis" were made up for those episodes, despite that these would be things already figured out to flesh out the world, even things like what year the series was set in wasn't finalized, and because episodes would have different writers, things would change, like adding shuttles to the ship or changing Kirks middle initial from R to T, heck we didn't know Kirks middle name till The Animated Series.

[DrWheelz]

I would have rated this episode 10\10 if Apollo had taken a page from Zeus' playbook and turned himself into a swan to seduce her.

"Hey, baby. Wanna make a demigod? I'll beak you in your callipygean ideal so hard you'll be calling my species out all night long."