TOS - Who Mourns for Adonais?

[Nealithi]

The question of why do the cosmic astronauts pick Earth to pose as gods on.
Well consider this. Most of the other species out there were further advanced.
Kirk landing in ancient Greece with a phaser could be considered Zeus by the locals. It was power so far beyond the imagination of the time to be a mortal tool.
But one question. I am not a history or mythology scholar. But wasn't the pantheon basically individual gods worshipped in individual cities for the most part?

[Madner Kami]

Just a few things I feel the need to comment on, in order to bloat this thread to thirty pages:

So the greek pantheon decided to leave Earth, because the Earthlings kinda lost interest in them? Ok, first things first:

• What lead them to settle on Pollux IV then? There's no species to worship them there, so, presuming they actually need the worship in order to exist, there's absolutely no incentive to settle on that world! Why did they end up there?
• So they, again, presumably, sustain themselves based on the worship of people. They leave Earth because people stopped worshipping them. How does that happen in the first place? If beings like that, who can summon a spacehand at will, would roam around the Earth, I would instantly praise them as gods and the majority of humanity would as well, especially considering that if we upset them in any way, they'd literally smite us. I can not help but believe in a god, if said god is standing in front of me and does godly things... I may suspect that there is technology at play, but that is from the view of a human from the 21st century, not a greek nobody in a tunic, after all...
• How is Apollo the one that survives the longest without sustenance? I can see a lot of the other gods going before Apollo, but he'd be one of the prime suspects of an early death. Sure yeah, let's stretch the imagination and say, that any sun-god in human history is Apollo in some form or another (which can be disproven by having a look at varying myths regarding solar deities all over Earth; e.g. the Aztecs know at least 5 distinct gods who embody the sun), then how is Apollo surviving? Sure the Apollo-cults got merged into later solar deities (Hello Mithras or Sol Invictus), so they kinda could have survived until widespread christianization began and one can argue that Apollo got somewhat merged into the wierd conglomerate that is the judeo-christian-islamic belief-system, but hey, nobody really worships God or Jesus as the embodiment of the Sun. Hell, there are more believers in the various Hindu solar deities, than there are people who believe that the sun is the embodiment of God, so shouldn't Apollo logically appear as, say, Indra?
• I got side-tracked in my previous point, so let's go back there and start again: Why does Apollo survive? The various sun-cults, although playing a central role, rarely are the center of the belief-system. Zeus and Jupiter have a vastely larger role than Apollo, both in terms of the myth as well as actual worship. Sure, Zoroastrianism and the Mithras/Sol-Invictus-cults are very sun-centric, but they are a minority among belief-systems. Yes, almost any religion worships the sun in some capacity (and I am willing to argue, that of all the gods humanity ever encountered, the Sun will be the one to survive into any age, given how stars are literally the source of pretty everything, scientifically speaking), but almost none have the sun-god as the central deity. It will usually be some sort of either god of war or a primogenitor-deity, after all...
• Is anyone else perplexed by the position of Apollo's lone visible nipple? Sure, there's much variety in that regard among humans, but his looks off, as if it's the result of a botched beauty-surgery...
• A comment about the cinematography: I really like how they often make Apollo appear as larger than our heroes. Granted, this does not work out for some reason, when he stands opposite to Kirk (intended?), but pay attention to how big he appears when sitting in his chair in the background for example. Despite being visibly further away from the camera, he still seems to be physically larger than our heroes closer to the camera (particularly note-worthy at around 4:40 in the review). Good craftmanship there.
• Why is Bones putting the bowl of grapes and fruits away at around minute 7? It doesn't really interfere with anything they do on the table or their interaction and while I might accept that Bones puts it away for Kirk's convenience, as Kirk slightly stretches out his arms and the tricorder after it is out of the way, I still have to wonder, why he doesn't just push it aside and instead moves it completey off the table. This reeks of an off-camera request, because the bowl is visually disturbing and obstructive to the camera. It's surprising that this take remains in the final version.
• Why is Uhura wearing a towel around her neck, when she is crawling underneath the circutry? Couldn't they design that set a little bit less problematic in that regard, considering that it might be there to protect her costume, hairdo or whatever? Also, considering they had to build that set in the first place, for this single short scene, why did they do that in the first place? The show is chronically low on budget all the time and there is just no need for this scene. Or Communications Officer Uhura doing the work there anyways. Wouldn't it be more sensible to have an actual technician work on that thing? Some unpaid extra laying on the floor beneath Uhura's console, while she blurts some technobabble at Spock, like they usually do?
• Why is Scotty on that away mission? I mean, I get that he is woven into the love-plot and therefor has to be there, but again, why is the Chief Engineer in an away team that has to deal with a potential greek deity, while Uhura has to do a technician's work? Even ignoring the usual wierd thing that the primary bridge-crew (Captain, first officer, operations officer, chief medical officer and helmsman) are the go-to away team, but... Scotty? Chekov has almost nothing to do here and he's shown to be a competent technician repeatedly and him being all emo about Apollo woeing the girl, seems a lot more in-character than for Scotty, the guy who only ever gets emo when people bad-mouth his one true love and only woman in his life, the Enterprise...
• Again, I have to ask, why did the greek gods end up on Pollux IV? There's a civilization on a planet called Platonius, which is both fairly advanced and modelled themselves after the greek civilzation on Earth, so why not go there and feast on their worship?

[Link8909]

Kirk landing in ancient Greece with a phaser could be considered Zeus by the locals. It was power so far beyond the imagination of the time to be a mortal tool.

Pretty much, that was the plot to "Who Watches The Watchers" and "The Paradise Syndrome".

[clearspira]

Kirk landing in ancient Greece with a phaser could be considered Zeus by the locals. It was power so far beyond the imagination of the time to be a mortal tool.

Pretty much, that was the plot to "Who Watches The Watchers" and "The Paradise Syndrome".

Isn't this also the basic plot of "Tattoo"?

[AndrewGPaul]

I know Star Trek has been a little inconsistent on the subject, but does driving the last member of a Space it’s to suicide count as genocide? I mean, it’s not like he was a threat to the Federation - a “no entry” sign was good enough for the Guardian of Forever or the Talosians.

My vague understanding of Mediterranean religions before Christianity (apart from Judaism, perhaps) is that they were based on worshipping the gods “or else”, whereas Christianity was more about worshipping God “to get a better deal” (unless you count eternal damnation as “or else”).

[King Green]

While the discussion of "gods" in trek were difficult to debate because of Gene's obsession against philosophical issues and concepts of "the suns will" or "the written word" being slain. I would have loved if Trek tried to reconstruct the meaning of godhood and the soul, yet Kirk became the arch-angel many Abrahamic's despise.

Trek is an idea, remember that.

The Federation had created a powerful illusion of their idea of Utopia and Exploration. Yet those words are changed over time to create slightly different meanings.

Utopia=Land of Pleasure

Exploration=TAKING New Values

If Trek didn't had the illusion, they be like Warhammer 42k with dying Chaos Gods!

Small edit*
Gene was a disgusting man after a month of the divorce who was WEAPONIZING his ideas against other writers. Gene earned his position of Worst Writer #42.

[AllanO]

The question of why do the cosmic astronauts pick Earth to pose as gods on.
Well consider this. Most of the other species out there were further advanced.
Kirk landing in ancient Greece with a phaser could be considered Zeus by the locals. It was power so far beyond the imagination of the time to be a mortal tool.

Note that in the various Star Trek series the crews run across dozens of far more primitive (pre-warp) societies at various places in the galaxy. Including many places that are stone age, not just ones that are like 20th century tech or whatever. The ancient alien electric eels could easily run their con with most of those people.

This is even if we excise the really cooky places like the 20th century Roman world of Bread and Circuses (Googling that would be 892-IV). Although thinking about that was that world visited not by the group of aliens that Apollo is a member of, but instead a different group of aliens almost identical to Apollo`s who interact almost exactly the same way with the residents of 892-IV as the Olympians did with Earth and so they also left 892-IV when the Roman analogs stopped worshiping them right.

So the scenario I envisage they end up on an analog of Pollux-IV and also slowly start to die out but instead of Apollo being the last god standing it is Dionysus (going for a little Apollonian-Dionysian contrast), I think the Enterprise might have more trouble with him Bones and Scotty would be like "Wait lets hear him out, this is some pretty great wine."

But one question. I am not a history or mythology scholar. But wasn't the pantheon basically individual gods worshipped in individual cities for the most part?

My sense is that in terms of ancient Greek religion each city had its own set of myths about the gods and its own priorities about which one got the most worship, offerings etc. (so Athena is very prominent in Athens for example) however some myths were more or less believed by many of the diverse Greek. Also Greek syncretism meant that myths just got smushed together, so if there is a story about Goddess X creating a spring to bathe in after hunting, a Greek from another city would come along and go well X is clearly just another name for Artemis, so now you get a bunch of myths about X that become myths about Artemis-X and if they become popular in a different city then everybody starts believing "oh Artemis created this spring over in Y" or if they don't then you get a situation where "Wow they tell some weird stories about Artemis over in Y". So yeah.

[Artabax]

I know Star Trek has been a little inconsistent on the subject, but does driving the last member of a Space it’s to suicide count as genocide? I mean, it’s not like he was a threat to the Federation - a “no entry” sign was good enough for the Guardian of Forever or the Talosians.

My vague understanding of Mediterranean religions before Christianity (apart from Judaism, perhaps) is that they were based on worshipping the gods “or else”, whereas Christianity was more about worshipping God “to get a better deal” (unless you count eternal damnation as “or else”).

Wrong. The OR ELSE fits monotheism more than Paganism.
Inquisitions, Crusades, Jihads and Genocides are common for One-true-God-ists, because they CARE about the ONE true Faith TM.

When the Roman Empire wanted to conquer a new province, they often started worshipping that provinces Gods more fervently than the locals did.

Why would Pagans care? Our Clan worships Zeus properly, by definition. If the Clan in the next valley also worships Zeus properly. That is nice, but if they do it wrong, so what?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

That makes sense.

[remagynona]

Yet another episode with demi-god whose power comes from a machine that's easily destroyed, this tme though he has no idea how to repair or rebuild it but somehow it managed to last 5000 years at the very least through light years of space travel. Who actually built the thing in the first place? Someone must have built and maintained the thing all that time, and even that is before this civilization decided to use it to convince a very small portion of Earth's inhabitants that they are Gods.

I'm with Chuck here. I also thought this was the episode with the Kirk/Uhura kiss. Very forgettable and with all sorts of plot holes, bad characterizations and weak symbolism.