TOS - Who Mourns for Adonais?

[AllanO]

You could say the same thing about The Borg, however. Why do they keep making a beeline for Earth when there are plenty of worlds with humans and Federation technology? They literally pass by countless worlds and target a "small blue-green planet at the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy".

And that would be a totally appropriate comment, like there is little motivation for the Borg's fixation with Earth in say Best of Both Worlds.

The actual answer is that the Borg (or Apollo or whoever) has to be in conflict with the stars of the show so there fixation on humanity is just a convenient bit of bad writing to easily motivate that. Hence my comment I can't help but notice the bit of clunky writing, the world building on display is shallow.

This episode makes its Earthcentricness a bit obvious by having Kirk give a we humans have to stand together against aliens speech right before Spock (an alien) calls in to give assistance, as Chuck jokes in his review.

Of course in lots of appearances the borg are not obsessed with Earth as in there first on screen appearance of the Borg where Q just drops the Enterprise next to them. The borg were not seeking out humans or anything they were happily going about there business. Likewise there are lots of episodes where the Borg are not scheming to assimilate the Earth or the like but instead happily assimilating other people ("You know we do have a life outside of our conflict with you guys!").

So it is not necessary for drama that you have these sorts of simplistic motivations of the villains where they only care about humans, so you don't have to explain why they are not out molesting Klingons etc.

Likewise there were probably cleverer ways to write this episode that would address some of the complexities. Like Apollo could say of Spock "Ah, a Vulcan we visited your world to there I was known as Ollopa." Or whatever, just address it in some way. Kirk could have made a speech about how the proper relationship between beings is not the sort of master servant role Apollo envisages but a partnerships of equals as humans have with each other and alien fellow travelers in the universe like Mr. Spock or something and so on.

[Madner Kami]

And that would be a totally appropriate comment, like there is little motivation for the Borg's fixation with Earth in say Best of Both Worlds.

There actually is. Enterprise successfully escaped the first contact with the Borg by some pretty wierd means, while also displaying an ability to fight the Borg (a couple of Enterprises would have had enough firepower to kill a single cube and even though the initial warp chase went increasingly badly for Enterprise, they showed that the ship wasn't that far off the capacities of a Borg cube). Anyways, the Borg are quite likely not aware of Q at this point in time and assimilating a race that has some pretty outlandish means to traverse space pretty much instantly, without having to rely on a transwarp-webway, is a pretty big deal.

Also, there's another thing at play there. Earth is special in Star Trek, humans as well, to some degree. If you pay attention to the capacities of colonies, most are on a fairly low level of a few million people at most. Even home-planets of other species tend to be rather... lacking in terms of potential manpower and industrial capacity and it takes worlds like Quo'nos, Romulus or Cardassia, to begin talking about the same level of potential strength.
In other words, there's a damn good reason why most Starfleet ships are crewed almost exclusively by humans and that reason is not racism: We have the manpower, we have the industrial base (which is pretty wierd, when talking about a universe at the technological level of the Federation in the late 24th century) and, apparently, humans are absurdly persistent when it comes to "going out there". Klingons are mostly occupied by in-fighting and civil wars and are, actually, pretty weak when it comes to industry and expansion. Romulans aren't really expansionist, wierdly and they tend to do their own thing. If you leave them in peace, they turn in to (not on! usually at least) themselves and begin to stagnate. For a species that has been out there, since over 2,000, possibly even 3,000 years, they are, just like the Vulcans, oddly underdeveloped in terms of technology and expansion. And then there are the Cardassians. It's implied that they aren't really expansionist at heart, but are so by necessity (they were actually fairly similar to the later Bajorans and only became so agressively expansionist, because they ran out of resources in their home system). They are technologically behind the Federation and despite having the potential in terms of manpower and industry, lack the drive to "go out there" and so would be sooner or later beginning to keep to themselves. As for all the minor races... Well, the Vulcan phenomenon. Houndreds, sometimes thousands of years having access to the warp drive and yet, one mildly developed homeworld with a technological level of around Earth's capacities at Archer's time. And those take part in the 24th century Federation, which mostly leaves them to their own devices and doesn't enfore development or expansionism.

[I know this is mostly the result of the writers writing what they do, but that is the world we end up dealing with and discussing about, so it would be kinda useful to limit arguements to the facts of the world as presented. Obviously, once we begin to discuss the writer's lack of imagination or lack of understanding of scale or planet of hats or somesuch, we can throw away any in-world discussions.]

This episode makes its Earthcentricness a bit obvious by having Kirk give a we humans have to stand together against aliens speech right before Spock (an alien) calls in to give assistance, as Chuck jokes in his review.

While you can argue about the earth-centrism prevalent in much of Sci-Fi, you can't argue that we have, linguistically speaking (heh) a tendency to extend the term "human" to anything that is relatively close to us in some somewhat unspecific way, due to it's metaphysical meaning induced by the lack of anything close to us so far. If a species is about as intelligent as us or is relatively close in appearance (or both), then we consider them roughly as equals and tend to incorporate them into the umbrella-term "human". You see, "human" is not so much the name of our species in a certain way, but it is also a concept, an idea. A term to desribe a being with roughly the capabilites or mental capacities that are inherent to an average individual of the species homo sapiens. For example, human rights. We'll use this word for a long time still, even if we are aware that there are aliens and even if we extend the concepts behind those rights to other beings. We won't begin calling it "humanoid rights" for a long while or "sentient rights", in order to incorporate beings that are equal to us in intelligence, but have more appendages or no head or whatever, until another generation of language police comes around.

[AllanO]

And that would be a totally appropriate comment, like there is little motivation for the Borg's fixation with Earth in say Best of Both Worlds.

There actually is. Enterprise successfully escaped the first contact with the Borg by some pretty wierd means, while also displaying an ability to fight the Borg (a couple of Enterprises would have had enough firepower to kill a single cube and even though the initial warp chase went increasingly badly for Enterprise, they showed that the ship wasn't that far off the capacities of a Borg cube). Anyways, the Borg are quite likely not aware of Q at this point in time and assimilating a race that has some pretty outlandish means to traverse space pretty much instantly, without having to rely on a transwarp-webway, is a pretty big deal.

You could spin things that way, but I see little explicit in the episode that they were thinking that way. It really felt to me like: okay the Borg show up and of course they target the Earth. Hence I think its a fair comment.

The other problem with invoking those sorts of outside the episode inferences from things you see in other episodes is you can come up with those kind of considerations that go the other way. The Borg actually had already begun probing Federation and adjacent space in the attacks of the Neutral Zone (at the time it was unclear what destroyed the colonies but the way it was done is identical to the Borg attacks and Romulan also had colonies attacked, not Earth/Federation-centric there). So the Borg undoubtedly already have a good sense of the Federation technology level . Even more if the aliens from Conspiracy were working for the Borg. Therefore it makes as much sense to think they would have concluded that the encounter was the result of some exogenous effect like Q or an unstable natural event like wormhole etc. there are reasons to think they might have been able to hack the Federation and get the log reports on the incident and so be totally aware it was Q.

So I am going to say that indeed it would be appropriate to make a comment about how the Borg seem strangely fixated on the Earth in Best of Both Worlds (versus attacking both Federation and Romulan places in say Neutral Zone) and it suggests sloppy writing. This is the invitation to start a conversation not to end it. The fact that this does not exhaust what can be said about the issue is no reason not to say it at all.

Star Trek is a TV show meant to primarily entertain and maybe also sometimes make you think, sometimes what you end up thinking about his how the creators put the show together and what it says about their craft.

This episode makes its Earthcentricness a bit obvious by having Kirk give a we humans have to stand together against aliens speech right before Spock (an alien) calls in to give assistance, as Chuck jokes in his review.

While you can argue about the earth-centrism prevalent in much of Sci-Fi, you can't argue that we have, linguistically speaking (heh) a tendency to extend the term "human" to anything that is relatively close to us in some somewhat unspecific way, due to it's metaphysical meaning induced by the lack of anything close to us so far. If a species is about as intelligent as us or is relatively close in appearance (or both), then we consider them roughly as equals and tend to incorporate them into the umbrella-term "human".

The problem with interpreting it that way is that they say as much in the episode Apollo is basically a human with a few extra organs. He is just as human as say Spock by the loose definition of enough like us for practical and moral purposes.

Kirk's speech is in part precisely a call to reject Apollo because he is not human in the sense of exactly physiologically like us, which is in tension with the fact that actually beings like Spock who are not physiologically human get along quite well with humans on the ship. Arguably the point of the episode is that Apollo considers himself above humans but he has feet of clay and is actually subject to much the same foibles and weaknesses (plus a few extra ones), the god is human (in the loose sense).

Now you could say that Kirk's real point is not that Apollo is some physical other (not physiologically human) but rather that he is an ideological other (he believes that others should be slaves to his will, whereas freedom is a fundamental to the dignity of all sentient beings to Kirk and crew). In which case I say Kirk's speech would have sounded better and been more to the point if he had pitched it in those sort of ideological, social, psychological terms rather than talking about "humans".

So I think Chuck's joke and my comment still make a lot of sense and suggest something about the way the writers were thinking. It is not the only thing to be said about the speech, but there is a connotation to react to there.

[drewder]

It would be kind of funny if they came upon a planet of Aliens who used to claim to be Gods to the Talaxians and have Kirk be like the who?

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I spent decades thinking this episode was titled "Who Mourns for Adonis".

Same.

I'm also disappointed in Kirk for using violence to resolve a situation he could have easily solved with seduction. Apollo swings both ways, as any scholar will tell you.

[Philistine]

... there are reasons to think they might have been able to hack the Federation and get the log reports on the incident and so be totally aware it was Q.

Huh? The Borg are quite possibly the most incompetent hackers in science fiction. Even in First Contact, where they enjoyed direct, physical access to the systems aboard the Enterprise-E as well as the combined knowledge of dozens of assimilated crew members in using those systems, the Borg still failed to take over control of the ship's central computer - an action which, given Starfleet's absurd over-reliance on centralized automated systems, would have devastated the ability of the remaining crew to resist assimilation. If the Borg were any kind of hackers, that movie would have ended very differently.

Just throwing that out there.

[MithrandirOlorin]

I know a radical Atheist who was obsessed with this episode.

[Darth Wedgius]

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?

That's not a bad point. Kirk's always been one for finding a less-than-obvious way out of an interesting problem.

[AllanO]

An interesting contrast for the treatment of aliens claiming to be gods in Who Mourns for Adonais is the TNG episode Devil's Due where a con artist impersonate local devil figure Arda, she actually does also claim to be the Devil and also a Klingon analog and so on. So the con artist clearly figured, "Yeah if there were a devil, no way would they limit their influence to one little world."

Even though the scheme is very different in the two cases (Apollo seems to think he really is above the humans, divine in some sense, the con artist going about as Arda knows they are lying etc.) I sort of think it illustrates a contrast in the perspective the writers had going in to writing the two stories (whether they were even thinking about all the other alien worlds implied by just the presence of people like Spock and Worf). Maybe it does not matter in terms of how entertaining or thought provoking the stories are. I still think there is a clear contrast in the way you are thinking about the questions of what would convince people there myths were true and so on.

... there are reasons to think they might have been able to hack the Federation and get the log reports on the incident and so be totally aware it was Q.

Huh? The Borg are quite possibly the most incompetent hackers in science fiction. Even in First Contact, where they enjoyed direct, physical access to the systems aboard the Enterprise-E as well as the combined knowledge of dozens of assimilated crew members in using those systems, the Borg still failed to take over control of the ship's central computer - an action which, given Starfleet's absurd over-reliance on centralized automated systems, would have devastated the ability of the remaining crew to resist assimilation. If the Borg were any kind of hackers, that movie would have ended very differently.

Just throwing that out there.

The bugs in Conspiracy must have been at least passable at getting classified intel since they apparently managed to almost take over the Federation without anyone noticing. If they were working for the Borg they could have sent along the info on Q (of course that all happened before Q sent the Enterprise into Borg space and the idea of the Borg using agents like the bugs does not make sense in how they are subsequently portrayed, but I think it was originally the idea they were toying with so I throw it out). After that if the Borg had other agents like the bugs then they might have infiltrated the Federation sufficiently to get intel on the "Q Who" Borg incident and realize the Federation did not get into Borg space under their own power.

This sort of long term intel gathering is much different from taking control of star ship during a live fire fight.

Anyway the point is more that this sort of attempt to extrapolate between episodes to some deeper motivation is very tricky because there can be evidence going every which way. So maybe the Borg have reason to think the Federation is special because of Q Who, but actually there is just as much evidence from other shows to realize no it is not or to suggest they would not care. We have to make assumptions and fill in gaps and ignore other evidence to do any such extrapolations.

I was being a bit cavalier about what resources the Borg might have to gather intel given the way we seem them proceed later. However likewise given how they proceed later I am not sure they would care too much about how something like the Q Who incident happened either.

It is interesting that the Borg are so bad at IT stuff that they are first defeated in Best of Both Worlds by being hacked and then in First Contact fail to hack the Enterprise. You would think a race as computer dependent as the Borg would have better tech support. Of course the Bynars were equally computer dependent and they were caught flat footed when they failed to maintain proper backups. A question occurs does the need for drama drive these sorts of simplifications, anachronisms and contrivances or could you write a more computer literate but equally dramatic version of these sorts of scenarios. I mean I think you could avoid some of the whopper mistakes but not sure if you can pull off an IT heavy plot in this sort of space adventure show and maintain tone.

[Laeril]

I spent decades thinking this episode was titled "Who Mourns for Adonis".

Same.

I'm also disappointed in Kirk for using violence to resolve a situation he could have easily solved with seduction. Apollo swings both ways, as any scholar will tell you.

True facts. Also, Kirk should be glad that he wasn't facing Apollo's sister, Artemis. He'd of tried to get his Kirk on and gotten turned into a stag and eaten by her hounds for his troubles.