"Return to Tomorrow" Line-by-Line

SARGON: Welcome. I am Sargon.

 

Spock: Sargon, would it harm you if I

 

SARGON: You may use your tricorder, Mister Spock. Your readings will show energy but no substance. Sealed in this receptacle is the essence of my mind.

 

SPOCK: Pure energy. Matter without form.

 

KIRK: Impossible.

 

MCCOY: But you once had a body of some type?

 

Sargon: A body much as yours, my children, although our minds were infinitely greater.

 

KIRK: That's twice you've referred to us as my children.

 

Sargon: Because it is possible you are our descendants, Captain Kirk. Six thousand centuries ago, our vessels were colonising this galaxy, just as your own starships have now begun to explore that vastness. As you now leave your own seed on distant planets, so we left our seed behind us. Perhaps your own legends of an Adam and an Eve were two of our travellers.

 

MULHALL: Our beliefs and our studies indicate that life on our planet, Earth, evolved independently.

 

Spock: That would tend, however, to explain certain elements of Vulcan prehistory.

 

Sargon: In either case, I do not know. It was so long ago, and the records of our travels were lost in the cataclysm which we loosened upon ourselves.

 

Kirk: A war?

 

Sargon: A struggle for such goals and the unleashing of such power that you could not comprehend.

 

Kirk: Then perhaps your intelligence wasn't so great, Sargon. We faced a similar crisis in our early nuclear age. We found the wisdom not to destroy ourselves.

 

Sargon: And we survived our primitive nuclear era, my son. But there comes to all races an ultimate crisis which you have yet to face.

 

Kirk: I don't understand.

 

Sargon: One day our minds became so powerful, we dared think of ourselves as gods.

 

Kirk: You said you wanted our help. What is it you wish?

(Kirk staggers back slightly, then there is a high-pitched sound as his head is flung back.)

 

SPOCK: Just a moment, Doctor.