Real Life in Star Trek, Who Mourns for Adonais?
Disclaimer
This is a discussion of a non-āFree as in Freedomā 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.
Previouslyā¦
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 āspoiler,ā if thatās 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.
Who Mourns for Adonais?
Before jumping in, the title of the episode is part of a line from Percy Shelleyās Adonais, an elegy for John Keats in 1821.
PALAMAS: Hereās the report on Pollux V, Captain. This entire system has been almost the same. A strange lack of intelligent life on the planets. It bugs the percentages.
Pollux (β Gem) is around thirty-four light-years from Earth, our nearest giant star, and one of the stars with the longest credible presumptions of hosting at least one exoplanet before the discovery of Thestias in 2006.
I believe this ābugs the percentagesā bit is our first introduction to future slang. Kirk treats the phrase as completely alien, even though the meaning is obvious in context and Leslie Parrish (the actor playing Palamas) is only a couple of years younger than Shatner, which vaguely suggests that itās uncommon in Starfleet to use informal language.
MCCOY: Lieutenant, you look a bit tired this morning.
PALAMAS: Well, I was up all night working on this report, sir.
SCOTT: Well in that case, thereās nothing like a wee bit of coffee to get you back in shape. Join me, Carolyn?
ā¦
MCCOY: And he thinks heās the right man for her, but Iām not sure she thinks heās the right man. On the other hand, sheās a woman. All woman. One day sheāll find the right man and off sheāll go, out of the service.
Well, thatās inappropriate on so many levelsā¦
I mean, we have someone criticizing a womanās appearance out of the blue, someone trying to take advantage of the womanās run-down state to ask her for a date, and dismissing her career, because sheās a woman and women quit to be baby crazy or whatever.
Captainās log, stardate 3468.1. While approaching Pollux IV, a planet in the Beta Geminorum system, the Enterprise has been stopped in space by an unknown force of some kind.
They got the starās location right! Thatās honestly all I have to say. They looked up the constellation.
SCOTT: External pressure building up, Captain. Eight hundred GSC and climbing.
I canāt find any existing unit of pressure that might read as āGSC.ā
MCCOY: Well, youāre the A and A officer, arenāt you? Archaeology, anthropology, ancient civilizations.
ā¦Thatās three As, and now I want to know which two are in her title.
KIRK: You mentioned Agamemnon, Hector, Odysseus. How do you know about them?
APOLLO: Search your most distant memories, those of the thousands of years past, and I am there. Your fathers knew me, and your fatherās fathers. I am Apollo.
Itās strongly implied by their mention, here and earlier, that Agamemnon, Hector, and Odysseus have all been revealed to be real people, rather than legendary figures of questionable authenticity.
We saw something similar in the adaptation of The City on the Edge of Forever, where we discover that Atlantis is historical fact for the crew.
CHEKOV: And I am the tsar of all the Russias.
Itās not entirely clear, given that itās a throwaway quip, but Chekov is probably referring to the All-Russia nation, which mostly amounts to modern Russia (āGreater Russiaā), Ukraine (āLittle Russiaā), and Belarus (āWhite Russiaā). Itās an old idea that became racialized under the Soviet Union and has since been revived in right-wing circles.
This is all to say that Chekov didnāt invent the idea, nor is this a reference to recent events over the last few years that make the throwaway line seem relevant.
MCCOY: I canāt say much till I check our these readings. He looks human, but of course that doesnāt mean a thing.
I guess McCoy has discovered a new test since the Charlie X days of measuring fingers.
MCCOY: Stunned but coming around. Iām not sure itās wise to let her go off like that.
KIRK: He would have been rather difficult to stop.
MCCOY: You saw how capricious he is. Benevolent one minute, angry the next. One more wrong move from her, and he could kill her.
Kirk is, to a certain extent, banking on Palamas remaining professional, but heās awfully comfortable with someone heās responsible for being in an abusive relationship.
SCOTT: Captain, weāve got to stop him. He wants her. The way he looks at her.
Scott limiting his concern to someone he finds attractive having a relationship with someone else isā¦not atypical, sadly.
KIRK: Besides, you stiff-necked thistle head, you could have gotten yourself killed.
I canāt find a solid reference for āthistle head,ā but itās possible (from sources I donāt particularly trust) that it refers to someone obsessed with Scottish lore.
KIRK: Apolloās no god. But he could have been taken for one, though, once. Say five thousand years ago, a highly sophisticated group of space travelers landed on Earth around the Mediterranean.
MCCOY: Yes. To the simple shepherds and tribesmen of early Greece, creatures like that would have been gods.
KIRK: Especially if they had the power to alter their form at will and command great energy. In fact, they couldnāt have been taken for anything else.
Kirk repeatedly thinks up and then forgets this idea, but this is the most thorough version of it, so this is where weāll talk about ancient astronaut theories, the idea that people in antiquity had encounters with intelligent extraterrestrial life.
While the simple āaliens visiting prehistoric peopleā trope comes a bit earlier (I intend to provide a translation for the one I know about it soon), the earliest version of aliens having been worshiped as gods that Iāve been able to find is Edisonās Conquest of Mars (1898) by science writer (dabbling in scientific romances) Garrett P. Serviss, where thereās a brief mention of the Martians resembling the Sphinx and may have inspired its creation during a mass abduction nine thousand years before. The first āseriousā version comes from Charles Fortās The Book of the Damned, where the author proposes many ābut what if itās trueā stories, on the basis that you canāt prove the absence of a phenomenon.
CHEKOV: Sir, some creatures can generate and control energy with no harm to themselves. The electric eel on Earth, the giant dry worm of Antos IV, the fluffyā
I canāt find any reference to an āAntos,ā other than as a given name.
MCCOY: Not the whole encyclopedia, Chekov.
Itās always tempting to shut down someone rambling about facts they learned from the Internet, but McCoy has no authority, there, so this comes off as obsessively anti-intellectual.
KIRK: Mister Chekov, I think youāve earned your pay for the week.
Itās easy to dismiss this line as a joke, rather than an assertion that members of Starfleet get paid, but the same joke is made in our world, where we know that people get paid for work.
CHEKOV: He disappeared again like the cat in that Russian story.
KIRK: Donāt you mean the English story, the Cheshire Cat?
CHEKOV: Cheshire? No, sir. Minsk perhaps, butā¦
The book theyāre arguing over is Lewis Carrollās Aliceās Adventures in Wonderland, which previously got a mention in Shore Leave.
The argument itself is a sly reference to the Soviet Union rewriting classic literature to better fit the way the government viewed the world. Iām not aware that this happened with Alice, specifically, but I see two possible translations that might have been known to the writers: Vladimir Nabokovās ŠŠ½Ń в ŃŃŃŠ°Š½Šµ ŃŃŠ“ŠµŃ (āAnya in Wonderland,ā 1923) and Nina M. Demurovaās ŠŃŠøŠŗŠ»ŃŃŠµŠ½ŠøŃ ŠŠ»ŠøŃŃ Š² ŃŃŃŠ°Š½Šµ ŃŃŠ“ŠµŃ (1967). For those of you familiar with the translations, Iām ignoring 1879ās Š”Š¾Š½Ń Š²Ń ŃŠ°ŃŃŃŠ²Ń£ Гива (āSonya in the Divaās Kingdomā), since itās pre-Revolution, though itās also the translation that you can find online, since itās been in the public domain a good while.
After this episode, the Soviet Union would see several more translations and adaptations of the story, but those obviously wouldnāt be on the minds of any writers in 1967.
KIRK: Most mythology has its basis in fact. If I remember my ancient legends, the gods, after expending energy, required rest, even as we humans.
I canāt figure out what myths heās talking about, here. Anyoneā¦?
MCCOY: I still say it can get us killed.
KIRK: Not all of us, Bones. When he comes back, itās a chance weāll have to take.
I canāt think of a time before this where Kirk was willing to sacrifice someoneās life for some greater good.
SPOCK: Progress report.
Stuffing your head into the insides of a panel to demand a status report seems like a great way to get Uhura to screw up her delicate work.
KIRK: Mankind has no need for gods. We find the one quite adequate.
While the specific religion is unclearāsee The Corbomite Maneuver, The Menagerie, Part 2, The Galileo Seven, Space Seed, and This Side of ParadiseāKirk is fairly straightforward in suggesting that at least a significant demographic of humans, probably including himself, are monotheists.
I hesitate to say that theyāre Christians, because monotheistic religions date back at least as far as the fourteenth century BCE, when Amenhotep IV declared the obscure Egyptian Sun god Aten to be the supreme, and then later only, god of the Egyptians. Recent monotheistic religions that arenāt Abrahamic sects include Cao ÄĆ i (éé«čŗ) and Seicho-no-Ie (ēé·ć®å®¶). Add in possible alien influence on Earth culture since, potentially, the 1990s, and the possibilities are endless.
KIRK: Lieutenant, get back.
Kirk pushes her away several times, more violently than makes sense, even though heās trying to get her out of the potential line of fire.
SCOTT: Carolyn. Whatās happened to her?
KIRK: Scotty, Iāll find out.
CHEKOV: Perhaps if I assisted.
KIRK: How old are you?
CHEKOV: Twenty two, sir.
KIRK: Then Iād better handle it. You all right?
Even though itās never stated, thereās a strong implication, in this scene, that Apollo has impregnated Palamas. I can see why they wouldnāt have wanted to make that explicit on network television in 1967, itās also odd that they didnāt end with the implication that a demigod could soon be walking the Federation.
KIRK: On you, Lieutenant! Reject him, and we have a chance to save ourselves. Accept him, and you condemn all of us to slavery, nothing less than slavery. We might never get help this far out. Or perhaps the thought of spending an eternity bending knee and tending sheep appeals to you.
Kirk echoes Pikeās distaste for human servitude from The Menagerie, Part 2, though doesnāt directly take a stance on whether itās only humans where he draws the line, or is opposed to slavery more generally. However, we might get some sense of that withā¦
KIRK: Give me your hand. Your hand. Now feel that. Human flesh against human flesh. Weāre the same. We share the same history, the same heritage, the same lives. Weāre tied together beyond any untying. Man or woman, it makes no difference. Weāre human. We couldnāt escape from each other even if we wanted to. Thatās 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 thatās truly yours is the rest of humanity. Thatās where our duty lies. Do you understand me?
This is remarkable in how disgusting the sentiment is. Rather than appealing to her sense of right and wrong, Kirk launches into a lecture on species loyalty. Itās even worse, considering that he defended Spock from a claim of disloyalty based on his race in Balance of Terror.
KIRK: Weāve outgrown you. You asked for something we could no longer give.
It comes off as a bit hypocritical to claim that youāve outgrown worshiping a god after previously suggesting that you worship a god, no?
MCCOY: I wish we hadnāt had to do this.
KIRK: So do I. They gave us so much. The Greek civilization, much of our culture and philosophy came from a worship of those beings. In a way, they began the Golden Age. Would it have hurt us, I wonder, just to have gathered a few laurel leaves?
While the sentiment of a subservient alliance with Apollo obviously makes sense, the last āwould it have hurt?ā thought comes out of nowhere after an hour of fighting that specific thing.
Blish Adaptation
The adaptation comes from Star Trek 7, so itās mostly just an abridgment of the script. The introduction is a bit different, setting Pollux in something called the āCecrops clusterā that I canāt find any other reference to, and some minor deviations like using the name Latona for Leto.
The ending does, however, introduce the idea that Palamas is pregnant.
Conclusions
Maybe the most striking thing that we see, that isnāt particularly societal, is that Greek heroes (and now Greek gods) are simple historical fact in this world. We also get some future-slang and a reiteration that Aliceās Adventures in Wonderland is still well-known. Otherwise, the pickings are rather slim.
The Good
I suppose that weāre starting to see some real reliance on the computers, with McCoy not wanting to judge Apollo by his human appearance.
Also, Kirk voices an opposition to slavery, though itās implied (see below) that he may only care if itās humansāspecifically, his crewāwho are to be the slavesā¦and he also walks back the assertion after the danger has passed.
The Bad
Almost everybody engages in some sexism towards Palamas, of course. At best, sheās left to deal with an abusive relationship, just because her partner is powerful, but sheās also treated as a sex object by Scott and McCoy. Kirk takes this sexism and adds a sudden deep level of racism in suggesting that Palamas has some duty to him, just because theyāre the same species.
McCoy also comes off as anti-intellectual, cutting off Chekov, just because it doesnāt interest him at the moment.
In Chekov, we also see hints of the nationalism that was off in the background of early episodes, here painting future-Russia as a cloistered, provincial region that pretends to be more important than it is.
The Weird
Iāve lost count of the number of times weāve been told that, in the Federation, organizations (including Starfleet) exchange money for labor.
We also continue the trend of suggesting an inconsistent importance of religions.
Next
Next up, we get something slightly less intense, just a rogue drone sterilizing the universe, while Uhura becomes an airhead inā¦The Changeling.
Credits: The header image is Apollo e Dafne by Piero del Pollaiolo and long in the public domain.
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Tags: scifi startrek closereading