So.....Sargon and company were able to construct spheres that would hold their essence for thousands of years. Why didn't they just create the humanoid robots they wanted the bodies of the Enterprise crew to create for them? And. . . shouldn't Kirk or McCoy have just asked them some quick tech advisement questions before they "left for Oblivion?" Like, "Hey, Sargon, just before you check out - how do we rid ourselves on our dilithium dependency for Warp Drive?" Still love the episode, but this struck me the last time I was watching.
Maybe they didn't have that kind of technology back then. Remember, there was a war going on. Most of their infrastructure was probably wiped out. Transferring their minds into spheres may have been the only thing they could still do.
It could also simply be that it took them those thousands of years to decide that living inside a sphere on a shelf beneath a dead planet wasn't all that fun after all. Originally, anything as crude as an android body would no doubt have seemed like an encumbrance the newly noncorporeal spirits felt they could well do without... Timo Saloniemi
Kirk: "Wait, Sargon! Don't go. We may have an alternative for you on this planet called Exo III. We can make bodies that are exactly like mine and Dr. Mulhall's. You'll love it. And it will only take about 5 minutes." Sargon: "Naaaaaah."
Or they could have taken Sargon and Thalassa to Planet Mudd, and had them take possession of two of those 500,000 years/500,000 lightyears androids.
The real question for me has always been: If they had the tech to create Robot bodies (which it seems they did because they were building such on the Enterprise) - why didn't they do that for the rest of them (instead of putting everyone's consciousness' into the globes); and if Sargon did indeed need to be in a Globe 'scanning the cosmos' - why not just have a robot body ready and waiting for the day it might eventually be needed?
My take had been that the survivors of the war supposed that life in the spheres would be pleasant and sufficient, but that after enough centuries passed they wanted to move less in the world of the mind and more in the world of the matter again.
^ Didn't know they even *had* a life in the spheres. I always thought they were just immobile and unable to do or even see anything.
Sargon was the more powerful mind, which is why he was the one to monitor space and contact/control the Enterprise. Henoch and Thalassa must have been morons by comparison.
One thing that amuses me in retrospect was the episode's use of deceptive climaxes to each act. The most notable was the seeming "threat" that should the crew of the Enterprise not help then the crew would surely die! The impression is that Sargon will kill Kirk and company should they not cooperate! Then, when we return from the commercial, Sargon clarifies by saying, "We fear you'll grow in power as we did and eventually destroy yourselves as we did. If you help us, maybe we can prevent that." Cheeky buggers! Sincerely, Bill