The Enterprise is trapped when a huge green hand made of energy materializes in space and grabs hold. A man appears on the scanner, threatening to crush the ship and extending an "invitation" for Kirk and members of his crew to beam down. Kirk beams down with McCoy, Scotty, and the pretty young Lieutenant Palamas, an anthropologist. When they meet the man in person, he claims to be the ancient god Apollo. He is offering the Enterprise crew a life of simple pleasures, in exchange for their unquestioning worship of him. But he also offers the vengeance of a god if they refuse him!
CHARACTERS
Capt. Kirk: Unable to abide captivity, he sets about trying to find a way to free his crew from Apollo's grip from pretty much the instant the hand appears. He is not foolhardy. He recognizes Apollo's powers, and urges the others to behave cautiously and courteously, retaining courtesy even in his own direct defiance. But he also remains keenly observant, probing constantly for weaknesses and using the resources of his crew and his ship to find a way to break Apollo's grip on them.
Spock: Completely in sync with his captain, and operating - like Kirk - from the starting point of Apollo not being a god, but simply an alien with an energy source. He uses the ship's sensors to find that source, while directing Uhura to work around Apollo's interference to restore communications.
Scotty: This is the first of a couple of "Scotty in Love" episodes. For Scotty, this means that his common sense, and the bulk of his IQ, trickle down out of his ears in gray, gooey lumps. From a sensible officer, he becomes generally useless, putting himself repeatedly in jeopardy. Kirk finally has enough of his middle-aged engineer behaving like a mooney 16-year-old, and gives him an appropriate dressing down. Still, even with Kirk finally snapping at him to "do (his) job" and even with James Doohan's best efforts, there is nothing in any episode to date to suggest that Scotty is prone to the level of unprofessionalism, even outright idiocy, on display here. I might also idly suggest that he find a more age-appropriate object for his amorous pursuits. Somehow, even though I had absolutely no problem with the even less age-appropriate McCoy relationship in Shore Leave, I was able to believe that pairing while I was unable to believe this one. Perhaps it's because McCoy actually remained McCoy in that episode, instead of turning into a pod-person.
Hot Space Babe of the Week: Leslie Parrish is Carolyn Palamas, the anthropologist who is pursued by both Scotty and Apollo. Palamas' choice near the climax turns out to be the key to the crew's escape. The Scotty/Palamas relationship isn't convincing for a second, save perhaps as a middle-aged man's unrequited midlife crush, but the Apollo/Palamas one works far better. Palamas' background, and Apollo's approaches to her, make it convincing that she would be attracted, and Parrish plays the rejection scene quite well.
Villain of the Week: Michael Forest does a solid job as Apollo, capturing the mix of the powerful and the pathetic the episode requires very well. He's a bit stiff in the person-to-person interactions on the planet's surface. Then again, I suppose a god would be used to one-way conversations. He plays well opposite Parrish, adequately opposite Shatner, and manages to extract just enough sympathy to be something other than a black-and-white baddie.
THOUGHTS
As with a few Season One episodes, I liked Who Mourns for Adonis? significantly better as an adult than I did as a child. The episode's musings on what was gained when ancient superstitions was abandoned, and what was lost at the same time, hold a distinct appeal to me. I enjoyed the presentation of Apollo as a being who is past his time and unable to accept that he no longer fits in the modern age. In the late 1960's, with technology starting to run away with itself, more than a few slightly older viewers of the time could probably relate to that on some level.
The episode is very well-directed. Marc Daniels was almost certainly Trek's best director, and his confident hand lends a peaceful and pastoral air to the forest during early scenes, and a very menacing atmosphere to the same setting later. Daniels does a particularly strong job with what had to have been a problematic scene, by late 1960's standards. After Palamas rejects Apollo - on Kirk's orders, and against her own desires - Apollo takes his revenge. We get the usual storm effects, and see her mounting fear. Then we see Apollo's form appear, his face pushing forward toward a screaming Palamas in a series of quick, close shots. The staging of the scene suggests a rape, but does so in a way that some viewers (particularly younger viewers) won't catch the suggestion at all, thus sidestepping potential censorship issues. At the same time, it's extremely effectively executed, both eerie and disturbing.
The episode did apparently have two alterations imposed on it by the networks. One was the removal of a tag which would have revealed that Palamas was pregnant with Apollo's child. I have mixed feelings on the alteration. On the one hand, the cut scene certainly backs up my reading of the scene in which Apollo assaults Palamas. On the other hand, it was clearly a jokey tag scene... and I'm just as happy not to have Trek be among the late '60's/early '70's shows that were happy to find humor in rape scenes or rape threats.
The other change was a slight addition to a line in which Kirk offers his initial dismissal of Apollo, telling him, "We have no use for gods." The network asked for a slight follow-up, so in the televised episode he adds: "The one is quite sufficient." This is a change I wholeheartedly favor. It may work against Gene Roddenberry's vision of a future in which humanity has discarded all of its superstitions. But, much like J. Michael Straczynski and Babylon 5, I never can quite buy that utopian future in which humanity is free of crime and conflict, let alone religion. Besides which, the addition is just a better line, snappier and more quotable than what would otherwise be a throwaway. And in drama, one should never let one's worldview get in the way of a good one-liner.
Rating: 7/10.
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