Real Life in Star Trek, The Squire of Gothos
Disclaimer
This is a discussion of a non-âFree as in Freedomâ popular culture franchise property with references to a part of that franchise behind a paywall. My discussion and conclusions are free, but nothing about the discussion or conclusions implies any attack on the ownership of the properties. All the big names are trademarks of the owners and so forth and everything here should be well within the bounds of Fair Use.
PreviouslyâŠ
The project was outlined in this post, for those falling into this from somewhere else. In short, this is an attempt to use the details presented in Star Trek to assemble a view of what life looks like in the Federation.
This is neither recap nor review; those have both been done to death over fifty-plus years. It is a catalog of information we learn from each episode, though, so expect everything to be a potential âspoiler,â if thatâs an irrational fear you have.
Rather than list every post in the series here, you can easily find them all on the startrek tag page.
The Squire of Gothos
KIRK: Ahead warp factor three, Mister Sulu. Colony Beta VI wants their supplies. Letâs get across this void in a hurry.
Weâre cycling back to the ânames are hardâ approach to destinations, I see, since this colony appears to be missing a constellation. Also, similar to in The Galileo Seven and The Conscience of the King, we have another colony that seems to need an emergency delivery from the Enterprise, which seems to continue to confirm the idea we saw a hint of back as far as The Man Trap and Kirk hand-delivering Tabasco peppers to Jose Dominguez: Human colonies donât have a particularly solid supply chain.
In our outside world in 2020, weâve been watching the supply chain struggle under the heavy strain of the fallout of COVID-19, but weâre nowhere near the point where anybodyâs lifeline is a military or military-like transport hand-delivering supplies.
Colonies through space are far more sparse than human settlements on Earth, of course, but it gives a sense of the economics involved that weâve heard about such a delivery in a quarter of the episodes so far, implying that itâs a big part of what starships are supposed to do.
MCCOY: Void, star desert. The word conjures up pictures of dunes, oases, mirages.
KIRK: Sunlight, palm trees. Weâre nine hundred light years from that kind of desert, Bones.
SPOCK: The precise meaning of the word desert is a waterless, barren wasteland. I fail to understand your romantic nostalgia for such a place.
Spockâs not wrong that deserts are kind of boring places to be, and this raises the question of why both Kirk and McCoy would be pining for parts of the world that they donât seem obviously connected to. That may imply either a resurgence in the sort of lurid orientalist fiction that used to be so common or it might suggest thatâdespite the strange perpetuation of cultural divisions (characters generally having names consistent with a specific ethnicity or heritage, Uhura identifying as Swahili, Sulu occasionally referencing his Japanese or a broader Asian heritage, Riley strongly identifying as Irish, and so forth)âtravel on Earth is much easier, where we might assume that most people growing up on Earth have visited most major cities.
Oh, and âstar desertâ appears to be a term unique to this episode.
SPOCK: Thank you, Doctor McCoy. Moving on schedule into quadrant nine-oh-four. Beta VI is eight days distant.
Spock must be using a future definition of âquadrantâ that weâre not privy to, if thereâs more than four of themâŠ
Also, note that, while weâve seen the use of phonetic alphabets in the past, this clarity doesnât extend to numbers. All the major alphabets that include digits at all use âzeroâ instead of âoh.â Also, American alphabets (where you find âBaker,â which has been used in The Naked Time and The Corbomite Maneuver since 1943 use âfo-werâ and âninerâ to prevent confusion with words like âfireâ and the German ânein.â This might mean that Starfleet uses a pre-1943 alphabet, bizarre as that might sound with so many deliberate improvements made by 1967, let alone the distant future of the Enterprise.
DESALLE: Iron-silica body, planet sized, magnitude 1-E. Weâll be passing close.
SPOCK: Inconceivable this body has gone un-noted on all our records.
Planet-like objects are sorted into categories on some two-dimensional scale where one of the dimensions has a limited set of fixed values. This is in contrast to just noting its approximate volume or mass, which seems like it would be more intuitive.
Also, Spockâs surprise at the existence of the planet would seem to imply that this âstar desertâ sees enough trafficâphysical or signalâthat a small planet would have shown up by now.
KIRK: And yet, here it is. No time to investigate. Science stations, gather data for computer banks. Uhura, notify the discovery on subspace radio.
UHURA: Strong interference on subspace, Captain. The planet must be a natural radio source.
Weâve heard of âsubspace radioâ a few times before. This seems to suggest that it just sends conventional radio signals through the medium of subspace.
DESALLE: With due respect, sir. Request permission to transport to the surface immediately and carry out a search.
MCCOY: I second DeSalleâs request. What are we waiting for?
SPOCK: The decision will be mine, Doctor. I have the responsibility for your safety.
DeSalle becomes the fourth younger character (after Bailey in The Corbomite Maneuver, Stiles in Balance of Terror, and Gaetano in The Galileo Seven) who believesâif not to the same extentâthat his opinion is important enough to direct the shipâs actions.
SPOCK: âGreetings and felicitations.â Hmm. Send this, Lieutenant: USS Enterprise to signaler on planet surface. Identify self.
On the planet, amusingly, despite all the times weâve seen bad sensor readings (or the crew has disbelieved the sensors), Jaeger chooses to believe his atmospheric scan to take his mask off and everybody else follows suit when he doesnât instantly die. Itâs not like we had an entire episode where the ship nearly crashed into a collapsing planet because some idiot didnât practice good hygieneâŠother than The Naked Time.
Also, in what might be the first instance of an attempt at continuity, Trelaneâs entryway includes a small alcove where the corpse (or a replica) of the shape-shifting creature from The Man Trap stands, implying that Trelane may have been following the Enterprise around since the first episode.
Since this might be the most convenient time to bring this up, Trelaneâs harpsichord plays Sonata in C Major, K 159 and K 450, by Domenico Scarlatti. I canât find any definitively free-culture recordings of either piece, but the Internet Archive has a recording of the former and the Petrucci Music Library has a recording of the latter of unknown provenance. Obviously, K 159 gets around; even if youâve never heard Scarlattiâs name, you have almost certainly heard that melody in backgrounds.
TRELANE: I canât tell you how delighted I am to have visitors from the very planet that Iâve made my hobby. Yes, but according to my observations, I didnât think you capable of such voyages.
JAEGER: Notice the period, Captain. Nine hundred light years from Earth. Itâs what might be seen through a viewing scope if it were powerful enough.
TRELANE: Ah, yes. Iâve been looking in on the doings on your lively little Earth.
KIRK: Then youâve been looking in on the doings nine hundred years past.
This implies a different timeline from what weâve heard until now. The assorted cultural references throughout the episode (Napoleon Bonaparte (1769â1821), Prussia (1525â1945), the harpsichord, Alexander Hamilton) strongly imply an implied setting of the early 1800s. Nine hundred years later would place this in the early 2700s, rather than the mid-2200s implied by prior episodes.
And as mentioned previously, but is far more relevant in this episode where we see two simultaneous visions of Earth from wildly different periods, this also implied a non-Relativistic universe. That could be a result of subspace communication allowing for something close to a unified clock.
Without that clock, Trelaneâs planet and the Enterprise areâby definitionâstill in the 1800s, because thatâs what signals from Earth would look like to them.
KIRK: Our missions are peaceful, not for conquest. When we do battle, it is only because we have no choice.
TRELANE: Ah, but thatâs the official story, eh?
Kirk tries to delineate what Starfleet is, here, suggesting that its intent is at least partially military, but definitely a peacetime organization with no ambitions for invading other territory. Not that Trelane believes the story, and not that we donât have ample historical evidence of invading troops telling themselves the same sorts of thingsâŠ
TRELANE: Do you know that youâre one of the few predator species that preys even on itself?
Trelane is obviously trying to needle the crew, here, but it seems noteworthy that nobody even objects to his definition of âprey.â
TRELANE: DeSalle, did you say? Un vrai Français?
DESALLE: My ancestry is French, yes.
TRELANE: Ah, monsieur. Vive la gloire. Vive Napoleon. You know, I admire your Napoleon very much.
I believe that DeSalle is the first character weâve seen to blow off a chance to talk about his ethnicity.
TRELANE: Und Offizier Jaeger, und der deutsche Soldat, nein? Eins, zwei, drei, vier. Gehen vir mit dem Schiessgewehr.
I canât help but notice that Trelane doesnât pull his creepy paternalistic âI know your culture better than youâ shtick on Sulu, except for the âhonorable sirâ line that could have been meant for anybody, implying that his ancestry isnât entirely clear, Asian culture didnât interest Trelane, or maybe even Trelane and the writing crew realized how racist that would have looked.
JAEGER: Iâm a scientist, not a military man.
TRELANE: Oh come now. Weâre all military men under the skin. And how we do love our uniforms.
Trelane is digging deep for any evidence that humans are warlike. Heâs not coming up entirely empty, but itâs definitely a reach. Testing humanity to decide whether we have outgrown our warlike ways is also a theme thatâs going to become almost pervasive in the franchise through the modern day.
Speaking of uniforms, Trelaneâs jacket saw a lot of use in the 1960s, mostly on sitcoms with fantasy elements, such as Gilliganâs Island or The Monkees.
TRELANE: Women? Do you mean that you actually have members of the fairer sex among your crew? Oh, how charming. And they must be all very beautiful. And I shall be so very gallant to them. Here, let me fetch them down at once.
This is a nice hint at whatâs really going on in this episode, but this entire plot thread also reflects back a lot of the sexism we saw directed at Janice Rand and other women in earlier episodes. By framing Trelane as a sexist only seeing the women as playthings, the crewâs fighting him starts to try to erase some damage done so far, sort of like Spockâs about-face in murdering aliens in The Galileo Seven.
TRELANE: Surely not an officer. He isnât quite human, is he?
SPOCK: My father is from the planet Vulcan.
TRELANE: And are its natives predatory?
SPOCK: Not generally. But there have been exceptions.
Interestingly, the Star Trek franchise is often rightly criticized for treating alien cultures as if everybody whose ancestors come from the same planet (humans excepted) have the same culture and most of the same ideas. Here, Spock is suggesting that there are violent people living on Vulcan.
I have to wonder how this relates (if at all) to Spockâs assertion in Dagger of the Mind that Vulcan draws no distinction between personal and institutional violence. Assuming that comment isnât just ignored outright, of course, it seems like there arenât many cases where this exceptional predatory Vulcan would be forced to stop by official government actions, either leaving them free or supporting vigilantism.
TRELANE: Ah a Nubian prize. Taken on one of your raids of conquest, no doubt, Captain.
Well, there goes the âwe didnât want Trelane to be racistâ theoryâŠ
TRELANE: Give us some sprightly music, my dear girl.
UHURA: I donât know how to play this.
TRELANE: Of course you do.
Granted, thereâs more finesse than picking out notes, but the idea that Uhuraâan accomplished singer and musician on several instrumentsâcanât figure out how the harpsichord works is surprising.
The music, incidentally, is Roses from the South, a waltz by Johann Strauss.
You know his work, from movies like 2001: A Space Odessey, which has nothing to do with this show.
ROSS: May I take a moment to change?
KIRK: Yes, I think you might. Turn in your glass slippers. The ball is over.
ROSS: Gladly, Captain.
The reference to Cinderella was obligatory, I suppose. What doesnât come through in the transcript, though, is the long pauses in this brief exchange, suggesting that there was supposed to be something else happening.
TRELANE: Silence! This trial is over. You are guilty. On all counts, you are guilty. And according to your own laws, this court has no choice in fixing punishment. You will hang by the neck, Captain, until you are dead, dead, dead!
Trelane is parroting a probably apocryphal story about Isaac Parker, one of the infamous âhanging judgesâ of American frontier towns. I say âprobably apocryphal,â because there has been a recent push to rehabilitate his image as merely a stern judge who convicted a lot of defendants, playing up that his judgments resulted in less than a hundred executions out of more than ten thousand cases, and we donât exactly have audio recordings. However, thatâs a bit after Trelaneâs target of the early 1800s, so it may also refer to someone earlier.
TRELANE: I know. That will be dull. Weâll have to have something more fanciful. Let me see. A hunt. A royal hunt. Predator against predator. Now, you may go hide in the forest anywhere you like and I shall seek. How does that strike you, Captain?
This is surely a reference to The Most Dangerous Game or one of its adaptations. Published in 1924, incidentally, the copyright on Connellâs story would have expired in January of this year, placing it in the public domain.
TRELANE: You always stop me when Iâm having fun.
FATHER: Youâre disobedient and cruel. Weâve told you before.
MOTHER: Time to come in now, Trelane.
My favorite part about this exchange is the idea that Trelane naturally speaks with a light Brooklyn accent.
TRELANE: But I havenât finished studying my predators yet.
FATHER: This is not studying them.
This is a weirdly compelling twist, and Iâm almost surprised that the writers didnât include Spock in this scene to snark about Trelaneâs aforementioned poor scientific method in digging for evidence that proves his hypothesis about humans being predatory, rather than seeing where the evidence leads. That would have been a much funner joke than a lot of the endings we getâŠ
MOTHER: If you cannot take proper care of your pets, you cannot have them at all.
TRELANE: Oh, but I was winning. I was winning.
FATHER: Theyâre beings, Trelane. They have spirit. Theyâre superior.
This is a new one. The previous near-omnipotent creatures weâve encountered have dismissed us as not really worth dealing with, such as the Thasians from Charlie X, Gary Mitchell from Where No Man Has Gone Before, and even the Talosians from The Menagerie. Trelaneâs father, however, calls humans âsuperior,â based almost entirely on Kirkâs willingness to fight back.
Of course, his mother referred to the Enterprise crew as âpets,â so maybe he was just being exceptionally nice.
UHURA: Colony Beta VI clears us for normal approach, sir.
The episode sees the entire mission through, skipping eight days of travel during which the following discussion clearly should have already taken place.
SPOCK: For the record, how do we describe him? Pure mentality? Force of intellect? Embodied energy? Superbeing? He must be classified, sir.
KIRK: God of war, Mister Spock.
SPOCK: I hardly find that fitting.
KIRK: Then a small boy, and a very naughty one at that.
SPOCK: It will make a strange entry in the library banks.
Sort of like the size of Gothos is given as â1-E,â any aliens the Enterprise encounters apparently require a pithy description before the final paperwork can be filed on the mission. I can see why Spock waited eight days before bringing this upâŠ
KIRK: Yes. Dipping little girlsâ curls in inkwells. Stealing apples from the neighborsâ trees. Tying cans onâForgive me, Mister Spock. I should have known better.
Iâm not sure that Kick should know better. Weâve seen Spock sexually harass Janice Rand too many times to count, with Uhura singing an entire song about the women in the crew being afraid of him, and he stole the entire Enterprise in The Menagerie. So, that description doesnât sound too far from what I would expect from a young Spock, at least. To be fair, though, I canât think of anything analogous to tying cans to animal tails, so maybe thatâs where Kirk was drawing the line.
Blish Adaptation
This one shows up late in the run, so itâs basically a transcript with small amounts of linking narration, as usual. Blish specifies the setting as Victorian England in âTrelane Hall,â and there are some minor changes to the dialogue, but doesnât otherwise diverge from what we see on the screen.
Commentary
Quickly editorializing, I mentioned the shape-shifter costume above and will mention some other call-backs. But between the self-referential quality of the details and the idea of the crew being put on trial, this episode almost feels like it was meant to be a season finale, rather than just another weekly story. Oh, well.
Conclusions
We donât get a lot, this time through. Certainly, a few music and cultural references suggesting what might still be current in the future of the show.
The Good
Unlike in previous episodes, DeSalle and Jaeger actively dismiss interest in their ancestry, which seems like a healthier attitude than someone like Riley clinging to his Irish identity for dear life.
At least in Kirkâs mind, Starfleetâs weaponry is reserved for defense, rather than provoking enemies. Thatâs not necessarily true, given how often countries have fought preemptive wars of alleged self-defense. But itâs at least a cultural norm that conquest is a waste of time.
The Bad
We got a solid reminder that there probably isnât an organized interstellar transportation industry, with many colonies scraping by with so little that the most advanced ships available prioritize deliveries to them.
Interestingly, we get a few âechoesâ of past bad behavior from the crew. DeSalle tries to push Spock to put him in charge of a search mission, based on absolutely no interaction that weâve seen. Jaeger decides to risk poison and infection, just because his little box didnât find anything. Trelane treats Uhura and Ross like several officers have treated the women in the crew. None of these incidents are as bad as what weâve seen previously, but I canât help but think that they were written in as reminders.
The Weird
Deserts are considered romantic places, an idea common to the 1960s audience frequently being sold on Orientalist movies, but not something that has aged particularly well. Spock also implies the use of an obsolete phonetic alphabet.
Also, Starfleet measures things in bizarre ways. A planet is 1-E in size. Trelane is either a naughty boy or a god of war. Iâm starting to think they just make the units up as they goâŠ
Next
Next week, the production team does a terrible job pretending that they ripped off a published prose story with the same name in Arena.
Credits: The header image is Clavecin par Andreas Ruckers (Anvers, 1646) ravalé par Pascal Taskin (Paris, 1780) by Gérard Janot, available under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported License.
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Tags: scifi startrek closereading