‘Star Trek: The Unique Collection’ Revisited: “Who Mourns for Adonais?”

Who would have thought the god Apollo, shining thews and all, can be such an enormous letdown?

The primary episode of season 2, “Amok Time,” is without doubt one of the all-time nice Trek episodes. Its successor, “Who Mourns for Adonais?” although, is… Nicely, it’s horrible. Not fairly as wretched because the utterly incoherent “Various Issue,” however worse than absolutely anything else in season 1.

Worse, it’s principally a much less fascinating rip-off of the not all that fascinating “Squire of Gothos,” which was itself a much less fascinating retread of “Charlie X”. A dude with godlike energy accosts the Enterprise; we get it. Please, for the love of somebody aside from Apollo, can we cease with this?

And the Gods bellow again, with a terrific fanfare cue and detached particular results, “NO!”

All proper then.

Oh Look It’s One other Factor Made Out of Pure Power

The episode begins as they often do with the USS Enterprise whooshing by means of house searching for journey. It finds it this time within the type of a large inexperienced glowing handcrafted out of (look forward to it) pure vitality. The hand grabs them and they’re caught in house, unable to free themselves.

Then a floating head babbling about Agamemnon and different Greek guys seems and tells them they need to worship him and in addition beam all the way down to the planet. Apart from Spock (Leonard Nimoy), whose pointy ears remind the top of Pan, and whose face is simply too dour.

So Spock stays on the ship, in command, whereas Kirk (William Shatner), Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley), Engineer Scott (Jimmie Doohan), Ensign Chekhov (Walter Koenig), and anthropology and mythology skilled Lt. Carolyn Palamas (Leslie Parrish) beam all the way down to the planet to maintain the top comfortable and determine what’s happening.

There they uncover that the top has a physique hooked up (Michael Forest) and that he claims to be Apollo, the god of Earth mythology. He’s bought a bunch of Greek structure round to again him up. Additionally, he can develop actually big and soften phasers with a wave of his hand.

And, like Apollo, he has an eye fixed for the women. He transforms Palamas’ uniform into an off-the-shoulder robe and sweeps her off for a tete-a-tete, regardless of the vigorous protests of Scottie, who has a factor for the lieutenant. Apollo bats the engineer round for a bit, however doesn’t kill him, as a result of he’s a fundamental character.

A lot of the remainder of the episode is the touchdown celebration and the Enterprise crew working to give you a technobabble rationale for defeating this creature of infinite energy. They determine that he actually is Apollo, although not a god however an area alien who got here to Greece millennia in the past. In addition they determine he wants worship to energy himself, but additionally that he shops his energy battery within the huge Greek constructing they discovered him in.

To chop him off from worship, Lt. Palamas has to spurn him, which sucks for her since (because of the actually poor script by Gilbert Ralston and Gene L. Coon) she’s fallen immediately in love with the house alien threatening the ship who zapped her crewmates repeatedly. Love is blind and all that, and he does promise to maintain the ship’s crew after they beam down to remain and worship him without end. Nonetheless. Come on.

Anyway, Palamas does the spurning as ordered, evaluating Apollo to a micro organism she’d research. He will get heated up and gears as much as blast everybody, however then the Enterprise fires its phaser banks, decreasing the constructing to slag. With out his mojo, Apollo launches into one remaining overheated monologue. “Zeus, Hermes, Hera, Aphrodite. You had been proper. Athena, you had been proper. The time has handed. There isn’t any room for gods. Forgive me, my outdated buddies. Take me. Take me.” Then he disappears.

Kirk mutters one thing about the way it’s too unhealthy for the reason that Greek gods had been an vital spark for Western civilization. “Would it not damage us to have gathered a number of laurel leaves?” he wonders. It’s a foolish query, and somewhat than give a foolish reply, the episode mercifully ends.

Gods Are Uninteresting

The episodes about omnipotent vitality beings are sometimes fairly tedious. It’s tough to construct a compelling plot round a personality with no limits and infinite energy who can do something. The episodes like “Charlie X” and “The place No Man Has Gone Earlier than” that deal with the situation as a horror film work greatest. However lots of them simply really feel like one factor after one other.

“Who Mourns for Adonais?”  is much more tedious than these as a result of it principally presents the Enterprise crew themselves as gods. Apollo is that this massively {powerful}, harmful creature. However Kirk isn’t even a bit of bit afraid of him, and by no means considers for a second that he may be a god. He simply shrugs and units about killing him. “We’ve outgrown you,” he tells Apollo, and the script backs him up. Federation people actually are higher and more durable and wiser than gods.

Or no less than the boys are; Palamas, who McCoy calls “All lady,” is weak and worshipful. Kirk has to remind her of her obligation to get her to the modern-day, better-than-god degree.

Clearly, Star Trek, a mainstream tv present within the Nineteen Sixties, is sort of sexist by as we speak’s requirements—or for that matter by the requirements of Betty Friedan, who wrote The Female Mystique in 1963 earlier than Star Trek aired. Perhaps by the 2200s that may all be ironed out—although I wouldn’t guess on it.

Individuals aren’t excellent, and certain aren’t perfectible. In its higher moments, Star Trek acknowledges as a lot. In episodes like “Area”, godlike knowledge and awesomeness are introduced as issues to attempt for, somewhat than as issues attained.

“Who Mourns for Adonais?” doesn’t have that a lot nuance, although. The episode is simply devoted to celebrating people for having constructed tech toys which make them morally, bodily, and developmentally superior to the gods. It’s tedious and self-refuting, inasmuch as Apollo, because the god of poetry, was supposed to have the ability to spin a fantastic story. “Who Mourns for Adonais?” isn’t that.

This text was produced and syndicated by Wealth of Geeks.